Are Twitter researchers going to hell?

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Will I go to hell ?

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Drag picture to placeholder or click icon to add

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}Lust: In the second circle of Hell are those overcome by lust. Dante condemns these "carnal malefactors" for letting their appetites sway their reason.

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- Social media users are not a representative sample…

- Facebook: 53% (of US population)- LinkedIn: 19%- Twitter: 13%

(PEW data 2013 – Hargittai 2015)

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}Is Twitter a good proxy of social life?

US Twitter users:

33% Black/Hispanic

> under 50> Urban or Suburban areas> More than 50K $

This is where it goes…

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Temporal Patterns of Happiness and Information in a Global Social Network: Hedonometrics and Twitter

http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0026752

- Twitter users are largely unknown

- There are no reasons to expect any “trickle down effect” from Twitter to society

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}Is Twitter a good proxy of social life?

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}Heresy: In the sixth circle, Heretics, such as Epicureans ("the soul dies with the body") are trapped in flaming tombs.

- Research questions are defined by the possibilities offered through the API

- Data monetization has been a clear strategy behind the evolution of Twitter API

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}Dealing with privately-own data

1)

- API (stream/rest) based acquisition do not provide representative samples for big events (Morstatter et al. 2013)

- Using Twitter data providers can be extremely expensive (for average research budget in social sciences / humanities)

[e.g. Rule Text: eurovision Start Date: 05/18/2015 End Date: 05/25/2015 Estimated Activities: 2,042,000 The total cost of accepting this job is $580.00. ]

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}Dealing with privately-own data

2)

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}

Fraud: Sorcerers, astrologers, and false prophets here have their heads twisted around on their bodies backward, so that they "found it necessary to walk backward, / because they could not see ahead of them.”.

Hard methods for “soft” data

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Quantitative methods often assume the stability of the research field.Can we still cite/use Twitter data published in 2007 or 2008 ?

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“Connect with your friends — and other fascinating people. Get in-the-moment updates on the things that interest you. And watch events unfold, in real time, from every angle.”

Practices –> structure

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“What’s happening?”“What are you doing?”

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Are we doing the research we want to do or the research we can do ? And what are the – systemic – forces affectingt this process?

One more thing

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Thank you