A Twitter world-improvement plan that doesn t involve deleting Twitter? Unleash the boffins, says microblogging biz
Academics can apply for free access to historic Twitter data, so there is a use for the well of human misery after all Share
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Twitter is making public tweet data freely available to academic researchers in the hope the boffins can use it to make the world a better place.
Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter have been blamed for making the world a worse place by allowing misinformation to spread unchecked, to the point that a former US president appeared to incite an insurrection via incendiary tweets and public ramblings about unsubstantiated voter fraud. Nonetheless, Twitter insists wider tweet distribution can help.
Twitter is opening up its full tweet archive to academic researchers for free
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Illustration by Alex Castro
Twitter on Tuesday announced a significant shift in the type of data it makes available for free to third-party academic researchers interested in studying user behaviors and trends related to online discourse. Now, Twitter says it will no longer require researchers pay for premium or enterprise developer access and will instead make the “full history of public conversation” what the company refers to as its full-archive search endpoint available to any researcher or developer who applies as part of the launch of a new academic research track.
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Twitter just took a major step toward making it easier for researchers to understand the conversations happening on its platform. The company introduced a new version of its API that will allow researchers to access wide swaths of public Twitter data, along with advanced search features.
The new Academic Research track could have major implications for researchers studying election security, misinformation and other big issues affecting Twitter. While the company has previously made this kind of data available to developers, it was prohibitively expensive for most researchers. But with the new API, approved researchers will be able access a full history of all public conversations on Twitter, as well as advanced search and filtering tools for free.
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