Tools that collect social media data:
- MAXQDA
- MAXQDA has a wide range of features to help you analyze Twitter data that will be useful during all stages of the social media analysis process.
- See their guide for analyzing Twitter data with MAXQDA.
- The DiSC Lab in Fenwick Library has MAXQDA installed on its computers.
- NCapture plug-in for NVivo
- NCapture is a free web-browser extension for Chrome that enables you to gather web content--including data from Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn as well as Web pages and online PDFs--to import into NVivo.
- When capturing data from Facebook or Twitter for the first time, you will need to authorize NCapture.
- You need to use NCapture with NVivo in order to extract the data. The DiSC Lab in Fenwick Library has NVivo installed on its computers.
- Tweet Archiver add-on for Google Sheets
- The Twitter Archiver lets you easily save tweets for any search keyword or hashtag in a Google Spreadsheet. Enter a search query, or a hashtag, and all matching tweets are automatically saved in the Google Sheet.
- Requires Twitter developer account and API key.
- Twitter Archiver add-on for Google Sheets
- Monitor Twitter for brand mentions, hashtags, and other search keywords. The matching tweets are saved in Google Sheets forever.
Advanced collection methods--coding required:
- Facebook Graph API
- The Graph API is the primary way to get data into and out of the Facebook platform. It's an HTTP-based API that apps can use to programmatically query data, post new stories, manage ads, upload photos, and perform a wide variety of other tasks.
- You need to register as a Facebook Developer and create a Facebook App.
- rtweet for R
- An R package designed to formulate and send requests to Twitter's REST and stream APIs.
- Users must be authenticated to interact with Twitter's APIs. See the usage paragraph on rtweet's Github to learn more.
- Tweepy Python library
- An easy-to-use Python library for accessing the Twitter API. You can install Tweepy from the command line using pip or directly from the Github repository.
Other options:
- Social Media Research Toolkit
- The Social Media Research Toolkit is a list of 50+ social media research tools curated by researchers at the Social Media Lab at Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University. The kit features tools that have been used in peer-reviewed academic studies. Many tools are free to use and require little or no programming.
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