[Air-L] help with Facebook analysis - research project social movement organizations

[Marisa von Bülow]

Dear all,

as promised, here is a summary of the answers I got on my request for help
with getting data from Facebook.

First of all, various people responded that there doesn´t seem to be an
ideal way of getting big chunks of Facebook data in a three-year period, as
we want to do.
As Bernhard Rieder himself argued in a recent post, "Facebook is a nasty
thing to study. It is much more complicated – in terms of interface,
architecture, features, etc. – than Twitter for example. It has a lot of
users and different types of interaction spaces. It is rather easy to
extract a lot of data from it, particularly for companies creating apps and
focusing on individual users and their network neighborhoods – but it is
really difficult to get any kind of macro view" (
http://thepoliticsofsystems.net/).

However, several very generous and nice people responded with the following
suggestions:

1. That I contact Bernhard Rieder directly and ask for a way around netvizz
limitations on numbers of posts. However, one person argued that he is way
too busy to answer emails, and I am guessing that´s probably true.
2. That I use NodeXL and the Social Network Importer to get data from
Facebook pages and groups. This was actually a great suggestion, because,
as one person argued, it has the possibility of defining specific periods.
So while I am still unable to get all the data I want, I can get posts (and
interactions) from specific periods in time.
3. That I use Discovertext. They have a trial version that can be used for
a limited amount of time (and data), but other than that you have to pay.
4. That I get "admin" access from administrators of fanpages. We have
actually been pursuing that option. Again, it does not give us the
information we want, but the metrics available as admin are very useful in
better understanding how organizations (in our case) use Facebook, as well
as the types of interactions they allow. As one person pointed out, though,
we have to pay attention to the differences between interacting in fanpages
and in Facebook groups.

To sum up: no ideal way of getting Facebook data through long periods of
time, but several partial ways that can help us build the larger picture.
Of course interviews with administrators and users can also be key,
depending on the research questions. In our case, interviews definitely
make a lot of sense and we have so far over 40 interviews with student
leaders.

Thanks again for all the help, folks! I will keep you posted as this
research project moves on.

Marisa


On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Marisa von Bülow <marisavonbulow at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I head a research project on the Internet and social movement activism.
> More specifically, we are doing a research on the uses of different
> Internet platforms by the student movement in Chile. We are currently
> setting up the project webpage, and as soon as it is ready I will let you
> know, so those of you who might be interested can access more detailed
> information on the project, including preliminary results.
>
> One of the main goals of our project is to analyze how the uses of these
> platforms have changed through time, more specifically between the
> beginning of 2011 and the end of 2013. We are also interested in
> understanding the differences in uses of the various social network sites
> (for deliberation, information sharing, protest coordination, etc.), and in
> better understanding their impacts on the relationship between the
> leadership and the students in general.
>
> The reason for this message is that we are struggling to define a research
> strategy to gather Facebook data (fanpages, groups and events). So far we
> have been able to do social network analysis with Twitter data, and we have
> also been looking into YouTube and the use of webpages and blogs. We are
> also beginning to do content analysis with posts (using Nvivo). About
> Facebook, we are wondering if any of you have had experience using netvizz.
> We want to get data on how well connected the fanpages of the students´
> organizations are among themselves, and other types of social network data.
> However, netvizz limits the access to the past 999 posts, which is a
> serious limitation to us, because, as explained above, we are interested in
> going back to 2011.
>
> Would you know of other options, besides netvizz? Any other tips?
>
> I am very grateful for your help! If you wish, please answer at
> marisavonbulow at gmail.com, and I will organize all the answers and share
> them with the list.
> Also, I can send anyone interested more details about this research
> project.
>
> Looking forward to hearing from you,
>
> Marisa
>
> --
> Marisa von Bülow
> Professora Adjunto III/Professor
> Instituto de Ciência Política/Political Science Institute
> IPOL - UnB/University of Brasilia
> Researcher
> Instituto de Ciencia Política PUC-Chile
> 56-2-3547826
>



-- 
Marisa von Bülow
Professora Adjunto III/Professor
Instituto de Ciência Política/Political Science Institute
IPOL - UnB/University of Brasilia
Researcher
Instituto de Ciencia Política PUC-Chile
56-2-3547826