Twitter is extending access to its application programming interface (API) to university researchers. The objective is to facilitate research for academics thanks to data published on Twitter.
These latest innovations pave the way for a product purely intended for university research. Researchers must therefore request academic access.
Data from the platform can be used to research everything from attitudes and perceptions around Covid-19, to public discourse and opinions on climate change.
More research data
Under these changes, researchers will have exclusive access to what is available in the Twitter API v2, as well as the following:
- Free access to the full history of public conversations via full archive search. This function was previously reserved for paying customers and businesses.
- More information on Twitter’s development platform for free. For example, Twitter now has a monthly cap of 10 million tweets, which is 20 times higher than the current Standard product track.
- Better filtering to better match the data collection to what is relevant for research and facilitate data cleansing tasks.
- Technical and methodological guides to offer researchers avenues for success.
According to Twitter, this academic research product is designed to address the biggest research challenges, including the ability to study what has happened in the past on Twitter. Until now, access to full historical data has been limited to paid API subscribers.
“With access to this new product, we’re giving researchers unprecedented free access to a comprehensive chat history, covering any topic you can imagine,” said Adam Tornes, product manager at Twitter.
Limited access
Here are the conditions to be fulfilled to be able to use the university research product:
- The candidate must be a master’s student, doctoral student, post-doctorate, professor or employee whose position is focused on research in an academic institution or a university.
- He must have a clear and well-defined research objective, and know how he will use, analyze and share Twitter data.
- The researcher must use this access for non-commercial purposes.
The “University research” product is part of a global approach aimed at opening up access to data for further research. Twitter API v2 will also have a “Specialty Business” product, more access levels for academics, and “Standard” and “Business” products. Twitter will continue to add iterations to the API.
Twitter adds that its Twitter API v2 will gradually replace the standard, premium and enterprise API v1.1. As a reminder, the platform launched its new generation API in July.
Source : ZDNet.com
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