Thanks to some very thoughtful and generous folks who have provided various suggestions as well as caveats, such as the instability of sites and accounts, the lack of standard procedures, and multiple forms of selectivity. We will soon be exploring some of the suggestions, but more are welcome! I will summarize and post all the suggestions and resources down the road. It's such a treat to be a part of the AoIR community. Thanks! On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 12:43 AM Jakob Jünger < jakob.juenger@uni-greifswald.de> wrote:
Hi all,
interestingly, though identifying accounts is a common task, no common protocols or methods have evolved so far. Cross-checking web links, directories, social media search and so on is definitely nessessary to get high quality lists. Each of the source brings its own bias.
I'd like to add one point from my experience. Some time ago, we systematically compared sampling accounts of German political organizations using traditional organization directories (the Oeckl) with online directories (plugragraph). The online source most likely will bias your sample towards more active accounts. Depending on the research question, this poses problems (for example, if you analyse activity indicators such as number of posts/comments/likes/shares).
Best Jakob
Am 06.09.2020 um 03:32 schrieb Muira McCammon:
I began this journey years ago by going individually to each US fed agency's homepage and seeing which official social media accounts were listed. I then cross-checked this process by searching for each agency's name in Twitter. Another level of checking entailed seeing which accounts the govt agencies themselves were following. Some initiatives have popped up over the years to try to keep track of govt Twitter accounts (Politwoops and Voxgov and even Digital.gov), but they are far from exhaustive. I guess I'm saying this, because it's good to remember that many orgs these days will have one primary Twitter account but then will launch smaller accounts related to specific initiatives/campaigns/etc. Often, it's really hard to find these unless you dig into who specific accounts are following.
-- Jakob Jünger University of Greifswald Institute of Political Science and Communication Studies
Ernst-Lohmeyer-Platz 3 17487 Greifswald Germany
Room: 3.16 (3. floor) Email: jakob.juenger@uni-greifswald.de Phone : +49 3834 420 3444 or +49 173 860 8056 Web: http://www.ipk.uni-greifswald.de/
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