[Air-L] Downloading Twitter feeds

Fri Apr 21 06:21:11 PDT 2023

Hello
I have an ethical question about scraping data from FB (that is already in the public domain)

I am preparing a project for ethical clearance. The research focuses on two community FB groups of 3000 and 7000 members respectively and of which I am a member of both.
As part of the research methods I will automate the collection of data for analysis (partly on spreadsheets), all of this would be possible manually if I had the time – automation allows me to collect a lot of data quickly – it is not extending access.

If this data is anonymised and not published would that be enough to protect the privacy of members within the group?
I wondered if anyone had experience of doing this and what additional safeguards they needed to implement for ethical clearance. The problem here is that a closed group is semi-private, individuals may feel like it is private even if it spans the whole community (this time a small town).

Thanks

From: Air-L <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of Stuart Shulman via Air-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Date: Tuesday, 18 April 2023 at 12:10
To: M.E.Sciubba <mesciubba at gmail.com>
Cc: air-l at listserv.aoir.org <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Downloading Twitter feeds
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The answer is complex, uncertain, and shifting. It is more than just a
technical issue of "Where can I get data now?" There are fundamental
legal, jurisdictional, market, equity, and political questions
unresolved. Resolution seems unlikely in the short term. As a
political scientist interested in election interference, I do not
anticipate a positive resolution before the 2024 U.S. election. I
would love to be wrong on that prediction. I have heard there are a
few firms that retain agreements to market real time and historical
Twitter data. You might ask your librarian about access to Crimson
Hexagon, Meltwater, or other similar services with long term
agreements Mr. Musk has not broken, yet. Nobody on the AIR-L list has
confirmed whether the academic API is shut down. Is it? I don't have
those credentials to check.

As I have written previously, there are massive troves of Tweets in
every computer science department and many social science departments.
Any one of the raw JSON Tweet archives could be loaded into a free
account on DiscoverText and then shared for teaching or research. Talk
to the data folks on your campus and across your discipline about what
is extant. Do not look for spreadsheets; find the raw JSON.
Spreadsheets are significantly degraded historical objects that cannot
be considered accurate representations of Tweets. Tweets live in the
Twitter display and die in spreadsheets. I remain befuddled by the
Python/R nexus. Those spreadsheets of Tweets simply are not Twitter.
Any qualitative researcher knows what I mean. Meaning is produced in
the interaction of the display elements. Meaning is destroyed,
diluted, and bent out of shape in spreadsheets.

The loss of real time access to new data is a problem and dangerous
for democratic systems. This does not change the fact that so much
data has been gathered and stored, like so many old newspapers. For
example, here is a list of the Top 50 datasets in my DiscoverText
account that any academic on this list or anywhere in the world can
access via the "peer network" that enables collaboration, annotation,
measurement of inter-rater reliability, and the creation of gold
standard training sets for machine-learning via a graphical user
interface that features the Twitter display.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j-Y40WmwFIX8pidfAcxgAt5JB3A3UyB2psh_ULQdynA/edit?usp=sharing

"The Case Against Spreadsheets as a Primary Twitter Research Tool"
https://vimeo.com/526218014
Question: When is a Tweet not a Tweet? Answer: When it appears in a
spreadsheet, or is deleted, or the account has been suspended.

On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 5:57 AM M.E.Sciubba via Air-L <
air-l at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:

> Hi Rotem and All,
>
> I am also looking for solutions to this. I hope somebody has an idea of how
> to keep doing research on Twitter.
>
> Eleonora
> *--*
>
> Dr. Maria Eleonora Sciubba
> (she/her)
> (2022): “Adesso m’incazzo!”: Swearwords as resources for managing negative
> emotions in interaction <https://mediazioni.unibo.it/article/view/15263>
> (2021) https://rolsi.net/2021/06/02/guest-blog-em-ca-for-racial-justice/
>
> *TSHD - Grant Design & Writing *
> *Department of Culture Studies - Senior Researcher*
> Editor, Internship Organizational Supervisor *Diggit Magazine*
> <https://www.diggitmagazine.com/>
> Tilburg University
> Twitter: @LolaSciubba
>
>
>
>
>
> *Be green. Keep it on the screen.*
>
>
> Il giorno mar 18 apr 2023 alle ore 11:15 Rotem Perach via Air-L <
> air-l at listserv.aoir.org> ha scritto:
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> > Can anyone recommend a way to download the feeds (historical tweets and
> > re-tweets) of Twitter users? Is scraping for example using Data Miner a
> > good idea?
> > With the changes to Twitter's API rules, API-based websites such as
> > Vicinitas.io have stopped working (or will stop soon), and I'm looking
> for
> > other approaches.
> >
> > Thank you for your help.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> >
> > Rotem
> >
> > -----------
> >
> > Dr Rotem Perach (he/him)
> > Senior Research Fellow
> > School of Social Sciences
> > University of Westminster
> >
> > ORCID<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8647-4367> | Twitter<
> > https://twitter.com/DrRotemPerach/><https://twitter.com/DrRotemPerach/%3e>
> >
> >
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