[Air-L] Nvivo for facebook pages

Deen Freelon dfreelon at gmail.com
Thu Apr 20 12:48:46 PDT 2017


If the pages you're scraping from are public, you should be able to pull 
everything you can see on the web through the API. The main issue you 
run into re: incompleteness is with comments, as FB only allows apps to 
pull comments from users whose posts are world-readable. To do otherwise 
would be an unacceptable breach of privacy, so that limitation is a good 
thing.

To Stu's point--yes, it's true that the understanding of some social 
media posts is not complete without the visual content. But the metadata 
for both Facebook and Twitter contain links to any pictures and video 
that may be present, which can be viewed for qualitative analysis should 
the researcher wish. What's difficult is doing so at scale, of course...

Finally, let me lovingly thumb my nose at the R partisans on this 
thread--you can do excellent analysis with R or Python, and there are 
plenty of great research-grade libraries available for both (I say this 
as a user of both). R does have more advanced stats packages but Python 
is better at preprocessing and transforming text data at scale. I liken 
it to the Mac vs. PC debate--everyone's got their favorite and there's 
no objectively correct answer... /DEEN


On 4/20/2017 7:54 AM, Marisa von Bülow wrote:
> Yes, Deen! Our research group has turned to Python (could have been R, 
> Maurice, but we chose Python for now) to collect data on Twitter and 
> we are now trying to learn how to do use it for Facebook. Not easy... 
> we will definitely check out your code, many thanks for sharing!
>
> However, even Python and R scraping face the issues pointed out by 
> Bernhard Rieder, don't they? I mean, we are still dealing with 
> incomplete datasets, which we can only speculate about. Right?
> Have you followed his suggestion, that is, have you compared retrieved 
> data using Python, R, Netvizz ...?
>
> Marisa
>
> On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 10:49 PM, Deen Freelon <dfreelon at gmail.com 
> <mailto:dfreelon at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     If you're not afraid of a little Python, here's another data
>     collection alternative (written by yours truly):
>     https://github.com/dfreelon/fb_scrape_public
>     <https://github.com/dfreelon/fb_scrape_public>
>
>     Just two lines of code and you're off to the races, plus it
>     collects all the new reactions ("haha," "love," etc) and is robust
>     to network errors. It's also free, which helps. /DEEN
>
>
>
>     On 4/19/2017 1:39 PM, Fabio Gouveia wrote:
>
>         Hi,
>
>         I´ve been using Facepager for some time and I love it. It really
>         requires a little bit of knowledge on how to make the calls,
>         but it´s
>         really a good tool to invest time in. Some issues on the Mac
>         version
>         and a little bit of knowledge on the different versions of the
>         API to
>         get reactions downloaded right. I do agree with Bernhard that
>         working
>         with facebook data, due to the lack of transparency, it´s really
>         complicated.
>
>         best,
>
>         Fábio C Gouveia
>         Scientrometrics and Altmetrics Researcher
>         Fundação Oswaldo Cruz - Brazil
>         fgouveiafiocruz at gmail.com <mailto:fgouveiafiocruz at gmail.com>
>
>         2017-04-19 14:04 GMT-03:00 Patricia Rossini
>         <patyrossini at gmail.com <mailto:patyrossini at gmail.com>>:
>
>             Hi,
>
>             I would strongly advise against using NVivo to scrape
>             Facebook data - I have seen the same issues that Marisa
>             has identified - missing data, problems to import.
>             Moreover, the NCapture tool only talks to NVivo, so you’re
>             not ‘free' to analyze the data elsewhere.
>             People tend to have good results with Netvizz. I use
>             Facepager, which is an open source software created by and
>             for academics. It requires a little knowledge on the APIs
>             to make the right calls, but works like a charm and
>             exports results to CSV.
>
>             best,
>
>             Patricia Rossini
>             Postdoctoral researcher  | School of Information Studies
>             Syracuse University
>             www.patriciarossini.com <http://www.patriciarossini.com>
>             <http://www.patriciarossini.com/
>             <http://www.patriciarossini.com/>>
>
>                 Em 19 de abr de 2017, à(s) 12:43, Marisa von Bülow
>                 <marisavonbulow at gmail.com
>                 <mailto:marisavonbulow at gmail.com>> escreveu:
>
>                 Our research group at the University of Brasilia
>                 (Brazil) has used
>                 NVivo/NCapture to capture and analyze data of Facebook
>                 pages, but recently
>                 has bumped into two serious issues:
>
>                 a) the dataset won't open in NVivo (when we asked for
>                 help, NVivo personnel
>                 said this happened because of date problems, which we
>                 have not been able to
>                 solve). We just switched to Netvizz and then opened
>                 the dataset on NVivo to
>                 do content analysis of posts.
>                 b) we have noticed differences in the amount of
>                 information gathered by
>                 NCapture in comparison with Netvizz. There are chunks
>                 of periods in which
>                 posts have not been collected by NCapture (and we
>                 confirmed that the data
>                 is there), which has surprised us, because we had not
>                 previously had this
>                 problem.
>
>                 I am happy to talk to you about these and other issues.
>
>                 Marisa
>
>                 On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 10:51 AM, mona arslan
>                 <mona_arslan at hotmail.com <mailto:mona_arslan at hotmail.com>>
>                 wrote:
>
>                     I would be very happy to talk to anyone who has
>                     managed to capture content
>                     from facebook page for NVIVO. Facebook pages as a
>                     data set specifically is
>                     my interest( not groups or conversation and not as
>                     a PDF, but as a dataset)
>
>
>                     Many thanks in advance!
>
>
>                     Mona Arslan,
>
>                     Teacher  Assistant  (AASTM) and PhD Candidate
>                     (Digital Media)
>                     Founder of The Egyptian Social Media Initiative
>                     @monarslan
>
>
>
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>
>
>
>                 --
>
>                 Marisa von Bülow
>                 Professora Associada/Professor
>                 Instituto de Ciência Política/Political Science Institute
>                 IPOL - UnB/University of Brasilia
>                 _______________________________________________
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>
>     -- 
>     Deen Freelon, Ph.D.
>     Associate Professor
>     School of Communication, American University
>     Office: McKinley 325
>     freelon at american.edu <mailto:freelon at american.edu> |
>     http://dfreelon.org | @dfreelon <https://twitter.com/dfreelon>
>     New report: Beyond the Hashtags: #Ferguson, #Blacklivesmatter, and
>     the Online Struggle for Offline Justice
>     <http://www.cmsimpact.org/blmreport
>     <http://www.cmsimpact.org/blmreport>>
>
>     _______________________________________________
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>     mailing list
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>
>
>
> -- 
>
> Marisa von Bülow
> Professora Associada/Professor
> Instituto de Ciência Política/Political Science Institute
> IPOL - UnB/University of Brasilia

-- 
Deen Freelon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Communication, American University
Office: McKinley 325
freelon at american.edu | http://dfreelon.org | @dfreelon 
<https://twitter.com/dfreelon>
New report: Beyond the Hashtags: #Ferguson, #Blacklivesmatter, and the 
Online Struggle for Offline Justice <http://www.cmsimpact.org/blmreport>



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