[Air-L] Twitter Data Office Hours for #AoIR2016 Berlin

[Shulman, Stu]

I strongly encourage the meetings. I have been talking, as a vendor with
academic clients, to Gnip & Twitter for five years about academic use
cases. There is general good will toward the spirit and intent of academic
work at Twitter, but there are also longstanding misunderstandings and
disagreements about how data is properly collected, stored, copied, shared,
and reported under the Twitter Terms of Service (
https://twitter.com/tos?lang=en).

Some key topics of interest:

- Replication datasets (Availability via rehydration versus copies, the
cost, and related rights issues)
- Free versus premium data services (Who should pay? The researcher, chair,
Dean, VP for Research, the library, NSF?)
- Classroom and research fair use cases (scope of use/access to the data
collected, secondary research cases)
- Researcher responsibility with respect to deleted Tweets

The last one is the hardest technical and practical issue, but it may be
the most urgent if the "right to be forgotten" is going to be upheld in a
meaningful manner in the context of Twitter data. Most researchers want to
know how they can get, store, and analyze more and more Twitter data. No
one has ever asked me how to purge Tweets that the author has deleted in
the time since the data was collected. There is no easy way to do this
currently, but there should be.

There are other issues. For example, it is my understanding that academia
is not considered an "industry" by Twitter, which I find unusual given the
scope and size of the research enterprise. If Twitter does not think
academia is an industry, then it must have some special status. Perhaps
this special status could be clarified and libraries could start
subscribing whole campuses to Twitter in much the same way they do
LexisNexis.

I would support moving Twitter data availability from the highly
gifted/funded research teams and organizations to a more ubiquitous "data
utility" status. There are haves and have nots in the academic Twitter data
world. Further, Twitter sells premium data to academics at the same rate it
does corporate customers. Is there not a case to be made for educational
pricing?

~Stu



On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 6:09 PM, Lonny J Avi Brooks <dr.brooks at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Sounds like a great opportunity to meet with these teams to gain a broader
> understanding of how Twitter works in general (i.e., how they do their job)
> and for accessing/using data for research purposes. Any chance to talk to
> industry teams enhances the dialogue. I'm in!
>
> Thanks for sharing and providing this opportunity,
>
> Lon Avi
>
> On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 5:38 PM, Michelle, AoIR Association Coordinator <
> ac at aoir.org> wrote:
>
> > We are happy to announce that members of the Twitter Data Products and
> > Trust & Safety teams will participate at AoIR 2016 and hold multiple
> office
> > hours for AoIR members.
> >
> >
> >
> > Many members of the AoIR community work with Twitter data in a variety of
> > scenarios, from fandom to political communication. The Twitter Data
> Office
> > Hours will be an opportunity for scholars to directly discuss research
> > possibilities with Twitter, in order to identify opportunities to more
> > effectively use Twitter data for research purposes. Twitter is also eager
> > to get feedback from researchers working in this space about how to
> improve
> > academic access to Twitter data.
> >
> >
> >
> > The Twitter Data Office Hours will be held on site during the course of
> the
> > conference. Starting today, you can contact twitterchat at aoir.org to
> book a
> > half-hour slot. We suggest that you either prepare a brief proposal (~1
> > page) that outlines your project, or a set of questions that you would
> like
> > to discuss.
> >
> >
> > Please keep in mind that the aim of the office hours is to facilitate
> > concrete research projects by making it easier for scholars already
> working
> > in this space to get access to Twitter data and share their feedback
> about
> > Twitter’s APIs and Data Products. Please understand that the Twitter Data
> > Office Hours are not intended as a technical introduction to digital
> > research methods.
> >
> >
> > Hope to meet you all in Berlin,
> >
> >
> > Michelle
> > _______________________________________________
> > The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
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> >
> > Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> > http://www.aoir.org/
>
>
>
>
> --
> Avi
>
> Kol Tov L'Hitraot (Be well, see you soon)
>
> Lonny J Avi Brooks, PhD.
> Summer Chair 2016, Department of Communication
> Associate Professor in Strategic Communication
>
> Lead Faculty for the *Long Term and Futures Thinking Project, the Long U*:
> www.longtermandfuturesthinking.org
>
> Department of Communication
> California State University East Bay
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>



-- 
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
Founder and CEO, Texifter
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartwshulman