[Air-L] Text/Data Mining Software Suggestions: for YouTube, Facebook & Instagram?

Tue Nov 10 09:09:30 PST 2020

Wow, I'd love to consult with lawyers that know and understand all of this
and have the support of universities because as a student, it's very
difficult to navigate the rules, laws, and regulations. All good points
brought up here!
I do wish things were more clear cut in this area.

On Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 10:46 AM Schaefer, M.T. (Mirko) <m.t.schaefer at uu.nl>
wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I am so glad this came up. This topic is widely neglected.
> Yes, there are rules to consider if it comes to terms of use, an area
> which is mostly covered by contract law. Personal data is covered in Eu by
> GDPR. However, there are also implementation laws for the GDPR which grant
> exceptions for researchers, journalists and artists. Mostly these address
> the obligations to inform data subjects.
>
> But this aside, what I find more urgent in the is debate (especially the
> exchange between Bernhard and Stuart) is the role of universities. I do not
> think it is desirable that research is stifled, channelled, or limited by
> platform providers. Not that I argue for violating laws, but I think
> universities and research associations have so far done little to support
> researchers in their efforts. European universities have installed DPO's,
> ethics committees, data management policies and privacy officers to comply
> with GDPR. However, these efforts do not take into consideration what
> complying with these rules means for researchers, how much additional hours
> we spent now on conducting DPIA's, ethical impact assessments, mailing with
> ethics committees which are solely focused on human subjects and have never
> dealt with social media data sets, developing data management plans and get
> DPIA's rejected time and again by anxious DPO's who are not willing or
> anxious to use the exceptions as formulated in the implementation law of
> the GDPR.
>
> For us at Utrecht Data School, it means that we work now with a privacy
> lawyer who guides us through the decision-making process of what to scrape
> under which conditions, and who assesses our projects for GDPR and contract
> law compliance. We can do that because we are quite autonomously funded.
>
> But the discussion we should have is:
> how are universities and research associations supporting researchers in
> executing their right to carry our research?
> how do research associations and universities address the limitation of
> research efforts by platform providers or other corporate players?
>
> Best wishes,
> mirko
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Air-L <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of Brooke
> Criswell via Air-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> *Sent:* 10 November 2020 17:24
> *To:* Bernhard Rieder <berno.rieder at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* Air-L at listserv.aoir.org <Air-L at listserv.aoir.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Air-L] Text/Data Mining Software Suggestions: for
> YouTube, Facebook & Instagram?
>
> I hope this helps guide you as well.
>
> https://research.fb.com/data/
>
> Please check out this link. You can apply for different access to data
> based on your research topic. Or you can submit a proposal as an academic.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 10:22 AM Brooke Criswell <
> bcriswell at email.fielding.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > I hope this helps guide you as well.
> >
> > https://research.fb.com/data/
> >
> > Please check out this link. You can apply for different access to data
> > based on your research topic. Or you can submit a proposal as an
> academic.
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 9:53 AM Brooke Criswell <
> > bcriswell at email.fielding.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> My apologies. I was just passing along what I have been told because of
> >> privacy settings within Facebook and Instagram. I have been told
> >> specifically by Facebook there is no "legal" way to scrape comments or
> >> different things like that. Now likes and shares etc, I have no idea.
> So I
> >> was just passing that along. I am by no means an expert in all of the
> ways
> >> and was not aware of other ways like Facepager. I just know Facebook is
> >> very strict with their data especially because of the privacy policy and
> >> settings people can individually make. I have been told Facebook closed
> off
> >> their API except for when working in collaborations or specifically
> >> accepted to get data from their research team.
> >>
> >> Very sorry if I gave wrong information. This is just what I have learned
> >> and been told and would never want anyone to get into trouble or collect
> >> items they weren't technically supposed to.
> >>
> >> Best of luck and if you do find anything please share!
> >>
> >> Take care all.
> >>
> >> On Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 5:35 AM Bernhard Rieder <berno.rieder at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Dear colleagues,
> >>>
> >>> I would like to disagree with Brooke here. Facebook data can still be
> >>> accessed through non-scraping based API-access, most importantly the
> >>> awesome Facepager.
> >>>
> >>> For Instagram, scraping is indeed the go-to technique (instaloader
> works
> >>> very well) and I would like to defend the idea that ToS should not
> hinder
> >>> researchers if the social relevance of the topic warrants it. Adhering
> to
> >>> corporate policy is not the gold standard for what independent research
> >>> should strive for, in my view. Proposing topics to people at Facebook
> may
> >>> be a strategy for certain topics, but for anything that does not fit
> within
> >>> the narrow interests of the platform, this will most likely go nowhere.
> >>>
> >>> For YouTube, you can also check out the YouTube Data Tools that I have
> >>> been maintaining here:
> https://tools.digitalmethods.net/netvizz/youtube/
> >>>
> >>> All the best,
> >>> Bernhard
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> > On 10 Nov 2020, at 05:22, Brooke Criswell via Air-L <
> >>> air-l at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> > Facebook and Instagram are strict and according to terms and
> conditions
> >>> > they don't allow any data scraping.
> >>> >
> >>> > Best try is to propose your study to a researcher at Facebook
> >>> >
> >>> > On Mon, Nov 9, 2020, 2:21 AM Alexandre Leroux <alleroux at ulb.ac.be>
> >>> wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> >> Facepager for FB and YT it has a user interface and a decent
> >>> documentation.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> There are scrappers for instagram but those don't comply with the
> >>> >> platform terms of use and afaik are terminal only.
> >>> >>
> >>> >>
> >>> >> On 6/11/20 14:59, Cristina Migliaccio wrote:
> >>> >>> Dear Colleagues,
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> Advance apologies if this question has been addressed (as I am
> >>> certain it
> >>> >>> has been) in some previous forum/email---does an easy to use
> >>> text/data
> >>> >>> mining software/platform exist that works across these 3 social
> media
> >>> >>> platforms: YouTube, Facebook & Instagram?
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> I would like to collect data on alphabetic features but also
> >>> >> paralinguistic
> >>> >>> features such as likes, shares, etc.
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> Any suggestions whatsoever for a text/data mining beginner would be
> >>> >> greatly
> >>> >>> appreciated (videos, lectures to this end also appreciated!)
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> Warm thanks-
> >>> >>> Cristina Migliaccio
> >>> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >>> >>>
> >>> >>
> >>> >> --
> >>> >> Alexandre Leroux
> >>> >> Ph.D candidate
> >>> >> Group for research on Ethnic Relations, Migrations and Equality
> >>> (GERME)
> >>> >> Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
> >>> >> alleroux at ulb.ac.be
> >>> >> _______________________________________________
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