After the ‘APIcalypse’: social media platforms and their fight against critical scholarly research

Bruns, Axel

doi:10.1080/1369118x.2019.1637447

Cited by 244 publications

(190 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…API-исследования -это подход в цифровой социологии, основанный на извлечении записей из наборов данных, доступных онлайн-платформам через их интерфейсы прикладного программирования (API -Application Programming Interface) [6,7]. Этот вид сбора позволяет агрегировать подробную информацию о больших группах населения при отсутствии прямого контакта с ними, поэтому сегодня использование API-доступа является распространенным методом социологических исследований ввиду значительного объема «сырых» количественных данных, которые они могут предоставить.…”

Section: сбор данныхunclassified

Big Data Technologies in Political Processes: Risks and Opportunities

Mukhametov

2020

Gumanitarnye nauki

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The article deals with various aspects related to the use of Big Data technologies in political processes. Digital technologies have an ambivalent impact on the social and political processes, creating the “grey zone” of opportunities and resources that are the subject of conflicts and competition among various political agents. This statement is equally true concerning election campaigns. Firstly, the author describes the concept of data-driven campaign, which is rapidly spreading due to the demand for flexible management mechanisms and the formation of the “attention economy”. The implementation of the concept includes processes of data mining and analysis, microtargeting — the article reveals the content of each stage on the example of recent cases. The essential advantage of using big data analysis in political processes is concluded not only in the scale of the data mining but also in the possibility to examine deep causal relationships and dependencies, which extends the range of opportunities to influence political agents behaviour. Secondly, it is possible to extrapolate mechanisms of data-driven campaign to the level of data-driven politics. The author formulates the major risks and threats associated with the use of Big Data in political processes: funnel of mistrust in political institutions and technologies, blurring political institutions and plebiscite democracy, the preservation and confidentiality of personal data, the consequences of algorithms cognitive restrictions. As a result, in the short term it will be relevant to provide institutional regulation of data using, as well as to support the development of human capital as the basic skills of personal data protection and the use of modern technologies.

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Section: сбор данныхunclassified

Big Data Technologies in Political Processes: Risks and Opportunities

Mukhametov

2020

Gumanitarnye nauki

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“…Reliance on digital data collected from the major social media platforms also risks research design dependent on the technical architecture and constraints of the platform in question, rather than activity and behaviour of the social actors and issues being researched (Lewis 2015;Marres 2017). Bruns (2019Bruns ( : 1556 argues that there are four options left in what he terms this 'hostile environment' for scholarly research:…”

Section: The 'Apicalypse'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The birth of 'the "Big Data" paradigm' (Zelenkauskaite & Bucy 2016) encouraged scholarship using large-scale data-driven methods with which to make sense of society. Access to the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) of the large social media platforms fostered the development of innovative tools and methods to collect and analyse these data (Bruns 2019(Bruns : 1545. The affordances of this access to platform APIs, and access to current and historical social media data from a range of social media platforms, changed the direction of epistemological and ethical approaches to digital research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 (Constine & Hatmaker 2018), the largest corporate social media platforms tightened up access to their APIs, and shut down many, if not most, straightforward avenues for simple data collection for the average social/digital archaeological researcher. As Bruns (2019Bruns ( : 1546 notes, 'the relationship between researchers and platforms was never entirely harmonious'. Without open APIs, 'web interfaces have to be scraped to access the data… which is labour-intensive and drastically limits the amount of information that can be collected and processed' (Walker, Mercea & Bastos 2019: 1536.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Using Social Media as a Source for Understanding Public Perceptions of Archaeology: Research Challenges and Methodological Pitfalls

Richardson¹

2019

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology

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Digital social science research has had an important impact on the types of methodological approaches to the internet and digital social phenomena, practices and communities. Whilst this paper does not seek to include empirical data, it aims to elaborate further on these debates in digital social research, that is, research on 'life in digital society' (Lindgren 2017: 230), using insights from my own research methods. This paper will firstly consider some methodological pitfalls that could sabotage our digital social archaeology research. It will then discuss the importance of understanding the framework and sources of our data. It will outline the two main methodological approaches I have used in my own empirical research to date -'thick' social media data collection and analysis, and digital ethnography. It will discuss some of the many ethical considerations that must be assessed and implemented when undertaking this type of work. I will argue for a methodological pragmatism when undertaking social research in the fields of archaeology and heritage, although this pragmatism can be applied to any field of social study in the digital world.

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“…For example, Facebook has prohibited investigative and critical research of ad targeting by disabling the functionality of browser plugins and web scraping techniques that collect information from the platform, in favor of alternative data access regimes such as curated collections like the Facebook Ad Library. Bruns' (2019) recently evaluated social platforms and the implications of increasing API rollbacks and data grants (what he calls the 'APIcalypse') on independent and public interest scholarship. While corporate data philanthropy access schemes such as Facebook's partnership with Social Science One, the Ad Library, or the failed Twitter gift archive to the Library of Congress all appear to support access for researchers, severe limitations on access, terms of use, and search functionality are crippling the ability to investigate technology companies (Alaimo 2018;Mozilla 2019b;2019a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigative Approaches to Information Technology Research

Carter¹,

Acker²,

Sholler³

2019

Preprint

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Recent events make clear that information technology companies often consciously design products that are societally harmful. They also make clear that these companies are unlikely to disclose their practices and often go to great lengths to keep them hidden. At the same time, however, these companies are responsible for wide-reaching, influential phenomena that should be of core interest to scholars of information technology. While scholars’ methodologies and ethical conventions have tended to privilege the agency of research participants and focused on the prevention of harm, we argue that the current landscape calls for a reevaluation of these conventions. Specifically, we consider here what it would mean for researchers to take a more investigative approach by seeking to discover and reveal information that the subjects of the research would prefer to remain unknown. In reviewing literature on investigative journalism as a potential source of inspiration, we attempt to start a discussion about how our research can be more impactful, as well as the challenges that would accompany such a change.

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After the ‘APIcalypse’: social media platforms and their fight against critical scholarly research

Cited by 244 publications

References 21 publications

Big Data Technologies in Political Processes: Risks and Opportunities

Big Data Technologies in Political Processes: Risks and Opportunities

Using Social Media as a Source for Understanding Public Perceptions of Archaeology: Research Challenges and Methodological Pitfalls

Investigative Approaches to Information Technology Research

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