Thanks Marcelo This was my question too and I think that this ethical discussion may well test some of those parameters. How might research for investigative journalism or security address these questions for example? From: Marcelo Santos <marcelolbsantos@gmail.com> Date: Sunday, 23 April 2023 at 14:50 To: Grasso, Floriana <floriana@liverpool.ac.uk> Cc: Butler, Rose <R.Butler@shu.ac.uk>, air-l@listserv.aoir.org <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Downloading Twitter feeds CAUTION: This message was sent from outside the University, purportedly from marcelolbsantos@gmail.com . Please check the sender is legitimate before responding. Please treat any links or attachments with care - do not follow or open them unless you are sure they are genuine. Good point Floriana, but again: are a private company's terms of service a legal boundary, sufficient to prevent researchers to deal with issues of public interest. If you ask me, no. But I know many IRBs follow the terms of service, which is a very lazy shortcut, IMHO, to solve complex ethical issues. I would very much like to know what others think, though. Best Marcelo Em sáb., 22 de abr. de 2023 às 14:11, Grasso, Floriana <floriana@liverpool.ac.uk<mailto:floriana@liverpool.ac.uk>> escreveu: Hi Rose I suspect you will not be able to collect any data from Facebook, no matter what ethic approval you have, as their terms of service<https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms> say (in 3.2.3): You may not access or collect data from our Products using automated means (without our prior permission) or attempt to access data that you do not have permission to access. We also reserve all of our rights against text and data mining. which basically says you cannot scrape content, but I would be interested to know if the legal team at your institution thinks otherwise? Floriana ________________________________ From: Air-L <air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org>> on behalf of Marcelo Santos via Air-L <air-l@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@listserv.aoir.org>> Sent: 22 April 2023 18:50 To: Butler, Rose <R.Butler@shu.ac.uk<mailto:R.Butler@shu.ac.uk>> Cc: air-l@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@listserv.aoir.org> <air-l@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@listserv.aoir.org>> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Downloading Twitter feeds Hi Rose, I am very interested in how you solve that puzzle. I have been working lately with WhatsApp groups that are publicly available and anonymizing and performing aggregate analysis have gotten me through ethics approval. If you are going to perform more qualitative research it might be very advisable that users are aware of it and consent, which might prove very complicated. Let me know how this moves forward. Best wishes Marcelo Em sex., 21 de abr. de 2023 às 09:32, Butler, Rose via Air-L < air-l@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@listserv.aoir.org>> escreveu:
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@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org>> on behalf of Stuart Shulman via Air-L <air-l@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@listserv.aoir.org>> Date: Tuesday, 18 April 2023 at 12:10 To: M.E.Sciubba <mesciubba@gmail.com<mailto:mesciubba@gmail.com>> Cc: air-l@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@listserv.aoir.org> <air-l@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@listserv.aoir.org>> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Downloading Twitter feeds CAUTION: This message was sent from outside the University, purportedly from air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org> .
Please check the sender is legitimate before responding. Please treat any links or attachments with care - do not follow or open them unless you are sure they are genuine.
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_...
"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@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@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@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@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
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