Seeking assistance on a social media research project
Hello colleagues! I'm mentoring a junior faculty member, located at an undergraduate, teaching-focused institution. As such, my mentee doesn't have extensive research experience (or access), but they are trying to complete a project looking at the intersections of social media, social movements, and motivations for activism (a bit far afield from my own work). Originally, they were thinking of looking into Twitter posts, responses, and engagement in social movements like Black Lives Matter, but with the Twitter API lockdown, this is likely out of reach. I'm writing to see if anyone has suggestions about how to study the use of social media and how it could influence/shape engagement in (online or offline) social movements. I believe my mentee is open to studying various social media platforms—right now, we're focused on finding something that they can gain access to! Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Happy to elaborate more off-list if interested. -Shannon Oltmann Shannon M. Oltmann, Ph.D. Pronouns: she/her/hers Associate Professor School of Information Science College of Communication & Information University of Kentucky shannon.oltmann@uky.edu<mailto:shannon.oltmann@uky.edu> Associate Editor, Library Quarterly
Hi Shannon, Given the topic, I would actually recommend survey or interview data. I do not think scraping social sites will actually deliver answers to the broad research question you describe. If your colleague wants to understand impact, they really need to speak to the communities involved, rather than looking at social media content. Content doesn’t tell us anything about impact to these activist communities. Happy research!
On Jun 1, 2023, at 6:57 PM, Oltmann, Shannon M. via Air-L <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
Hello colleagues! I'm mentoring a junior faculty member, located at an undergraduate, teaching-focused institution. As such, my mentee doesn't have extensive research experience (or access), but they are trying to complete a project looking at the intersections of social media, social movements, and motivations for activism (a bit far afield from my own work). Originally, they were thinking of looking into Twitter posts, responses, and engagement in social movements like Black Lives Matter, but with the Twitter API lockdown, this is likely out of reach.
I'm writing to see if anyone has suggestions about how to study the use of social media and how it could influence/shape engagement in (online or offline) social movements. I believe my mentee is open to studying various social media platforms—right now, we're focused on finding something that they can gain access to! Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Happy to elaborate more off-list if interested.
-Shannon Oltmann
Shannon M. Oltmann, Ph.D. Pronouns: she/her/hers
Associate Professor School of Information Science College of Communication & Information University of Kentucky
shannon.oltmann@uky.edu<mailto:shannon.oltmann@uky.edu>
Associate Editor, Library Quarterly _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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Hey Shannon, Twitter’s API is still usable. They announced the shutdown a few times, but never actually did it. Therefore, you could still do that and analyse some tweets. In the free API version, you are limited to 30 days backwards search, though. To do that, I suggest using Python packages like https://www.tweepy.org/. Best Samuel Student MSc Data & Society London School of Economics & Political Science From: Air-L <air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of Oltmann, Shannon M. via Air-L <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Date: Friday, 2. June 2023 at 00:11 To: aoir list <air-l@aoir.org> Subject: [Air-L] Seeking assistance on a social media research project Hello colleagues! I'm mentoring a junior faculty member, located at an undergraduate, teaching-focused institution. As such, my mentee doesn't have extensive research experience (or access), but they are trying to complete a project looking at the intersections of social media, social movements, and motivations for activism (a bit far afield from my own work). Originally, they were thinking of looking into Twitter posts, responses, and engagement in social movements like Black Lives Matter, but with the Twitter API lockdown, this is likely out of reach. I'm writing to see if anyone has suggestions about how to study the use of social media and how it could influence/shape engagement in (online or offline) social movements. I believe my mentee is open to studying various social media platforms—right now, we're focused on finding something that they can gain access to! Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Happy to elaborate more off-list if interested. -Shannon Oltmann Shannon M. Oltmann, Ph.D. Pronouns: she/her/hers Associate Professor School of Information Science College of Communication & Information University of Kentucky shannon.oltmann@uky.edu<mailto:shannon.oltmann@uky.edu> Associate Editor, Library Quarterly _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
Hello Shannon! I do not recommend to use the Twitter api as it is right now, as it can extract few Tweets and the sample might not be representative enough for this kind of study. I also coincide that it would be better to conduct interviews by contacting social activists through Twitter, Whatsapp or any other social media service they are using. In this case, something less quantitative and more qualitative would be better to choose one single movement or social topic, and start from there. Even better, find a local initiative and get involved with them. Regards, Xanat V. Meza Ph.D. Kansei, Behavioral and Brain SciencesUniversity of Tsukuba M.A. Media and Communication Yeungnam University B.D. Graphic Communication Design Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana El viernes, 2 de junio de 2023, 08:38:02 a. m. GMT+9, Groesch,SN (pgt) via Air-L <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> escribió: Hey Shannon, Twitter’s API is still usable. They announced the shutdown a few times, but never actually did it. Therefore, you could still do that and analyse some tweets. In the free API version, you are limited to 30 days backwards search, though. To do that, I suggest using Python packages like https://www.tweepy.org/. Best Samuel Student MSc Data & Society London School of Economics & Political Science From: Air-L <air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of Oltmann, Shannon M. via Air-L <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Date: Friday, 2. June 2023 at 00:11 To: aoir list <air-l@aoir.org> Subject: [Air-L] Seeking assistance on a social media research project Hello colleagues! I'm mentoring a junior faculty member, located at an undergraduate, teaching-focused institution. As such, my mentee doesn't have extensive research experience (or access), but they are trying to complete a project looking at the intersections of social media, social movements, and motivations for activism (a bit far afield from my own work). Originally, they were thinking of looking into Twitter posts, responses, and engagement in social movements like Black Lives Matter, but with the Twitter API lockdown, this is likely out of reach. I'm writing to see if anyone has suggestions about how to study the use of social media and how it could influence/shape engagement in (online or offline) social movements. I believe my mentee is open to studying various social media platforms—right now, we're focused on finding something that they can gain access to! Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Happy to elaborate more off-list if interested. -Shannon Oltmann Shannon M. Oltmann, Ph.D. Pronouns: she/her/hers Associate Professor School of Information Science College of Communication & Information University of Kentucky shannon.oltmann@uky.edu<mailto:shannon.oltmann@uky.edu> Associate Editor, Library Quarterly _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
participants (4)
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Groesch,SN (pgt) -
Jaigris Hodson -
Oltmann, Shannon M. -
Xanat Meza