[Air-L] Targeting a specific date on a public Facebook account?

[Bernhard Rieder]

Hi Virginia et al.,

May I just caution to be prudent with any data retrieved via the FB API, no matter whether they have been extracted with the help of the tool or custom programming? The API for Pages has been showing all kinds of irate behavior over the last months, some of it probably due to "fake news" blocking by FB itself, some due to one or several bugs (tracked here: https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/1838195226492053/). This manifests in missing posts, in general for longer date ranges. Looking for missing data ranges and comparing the API data to the page surface is certainly required to make any kind of valid findings at this point in time.

best wishes,
Bernhard

---  
Bernhard Rieder | Associate Professor | New Media and Digital Culture  
University of Amsterdam | Turfdraagsterpad 9 | 1012 XT Amsterdam | The Netherlands  
http://thepoliticsofsystems.net | http://labs.polsys.net | https://www.digitalmethods.net | @RiederB

> On 17 Jan 2018, at 09:52, Virginia Balfour <virginiabalfour at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks everyone.  I managed to get Netvizz to work - although it does present the data in rather a dense excel doc. I also found some really useful info via the NodeXL suggested my Marc  Smith.
> I also noticed that if you scroll through Facebook on an iPhone (rather than desktop) it allows you to choose which year's posts you want to look at - and that has saved me a lot of effort.
> Thanks again everyone!
> Ginny
> 
> Virginia Balfour
> 
> 
> On 17 Jan. 2018, at 18:14, Maurice Vergeer <m.vergeer at maw.ru.nl<mailto:m.vergeer at maw.ru.nl>> wrote:
> 
> Hi Virginia,
> 
> remember that companies can use expiration dates for their Facebook posts. This means that sometimes past posts will not be accessible anymore. My advice is always to collect the data as soon as possible. or at least allow a few weeks to let the comments accumulate.
> As Deen correctly states Rfacebook can do what you want. A nice package.
> 
> best regards
> Maurice
> 
> On Wed, Jan 17, 2018 at 8:02 AM, Virginia Balfour <virginiabalfour at hotmail.com<mailto:virginiabalfour at hotmail.com>> wrote:
> Hello
> 
> I'd appreciate if anyone knows how to "go to" a specific date on a public Facebook page (i.e. not my own, one belonging to a company).  I am researching comments and posts made of the last few years and want to be able to pick where I finished off on the previous day without always having to scroll back from today to the point where I left off.  So say I wanted to start my research on Sept 1st 2014 and then be able to work forwards or backwards from there - is there a way to do that?  I am in touch with the site's administrators, and although I don't know that they would let me have any kind of admin access - is this what I need?  Or is there a way that I can do it independently?
> 
> thanks
> 
> Ginny
> 
> 
> Virginia Balfour
> 
> Masters of Philosophy candidate
> 
> QUT, Brisbane, Australia
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