[Air-L] Twitter API Question

[Shulman, Stu]

Is anyone on the list currently using the $5,000/month option to access
Twitter data via the API for research?

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/getting-started/about-twitter-api

If so, please contact me about the functionality.

I was wondering if there might be interest in forming a special interest
research group for the 2024 U.S. presidential election cycle (SIRG 2024).
If a number of universities contributed a subscription fee, agreed upon a
steering committee to generate key queries to create a SIRG 2024 corpus,
and the data was collected via an API and then posted in free,
collaborative, web-accessible platforms for research and teaching, it would
be a stop gap measure to restore some academic transparency in a key social
media platform implicated in 2016 and 2020 election shenanigans. If we get
it up and running in the next 30 days, there will be more than 12 million
curated and accessible election Tweets before the voting begins. While it's
not what big data folks crave, it is enough to shine a spotlight on Twitter
mechanics in the election and build new teaching and research opportunities
around the data across a consortium of institutions.

I know there is a ruckus about how all Twitter data should be free, and a
meeting where we need not present proposed solutions involving paying for
data. That is a bit insular and slightly annoying but also wearily
familiar. More importantly, that is not how science works. For example:

https://www.science.org/content/article/how-much-did-your-university-pay-your-journals

Universities spend money on gathering and disseminating research and
teaching data. It is a core university function. Anyone who has ever run or
worked in an academic research lab or received a grant knows all about
costs, direct and indirect. Please contact me if you want to be a part of
SIRG 2024 focusing on the US presidential election. There are data budgets
on your campus. Talk to the top librarians, your Dean, successful grant
writers, as well as the VP for Research, then let's collaborate to solve
this problem. There could be SIRGs for a variety of important topics. It is
a collective action problem. Either we act or free ride.

Stu

-- 
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
Founder and CEO, Texifter
Editor Emeritus, *Journal of Information Technology & Politics*