מושגי ליבה
The Twitter API, which was available to researchers from 2006 to 2023, enabled a vast body of research across numerous academic disciplines, but its closure due to prohibitive costs threatens to curtail this valuable source of data.
תקציר
This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the research conducted using Twitter data during the 18 years the API was available to researchers. The key findings include:
A total of 27,453 unique studies were published in 7,432 distinct publication venues, with 1,303,142 incoming citations, spanning 14 broad disciplines.
The top disciplines represented were Social Science (27% of top-cited studies), Data Science (26%), and Social Media Studies (18%), with the remaining 29% spread across Public Health, Business, Artificial Intelligence, Psychology, Information Science, Education, and Emergency Response.
Major research topics included information dissemination, assessing tweet credibility, strategies for data research, detecting and analyzing major events, and studying human behavior.
After Twitter began charging $42,000/month for API access in 2023, the number of published studies decreased by 13% compared to the previous year, indicating a likely continued decline in future research relying on this data source.
The study highlights the immense value of social media data in academic research and the potential loss of knowledge if access to such data remains cost-prohibitive for researchers.
סטטיסטיקה
"Since 2006, a total of 27,453 studies have been published in 7,432 distinct publication venues, with 1,303,142 incoming citations."
"The number of studies published in 2023 decreased by 13% compared to 2022 after Twitter began charging for API access."
ציטוטים
"Lacking sufficient funds to pay this monthly fee, academics are now scrambling to continue their research without this important data source."
"While we cannot know for certain what will be lost now that Twitter data is cost prohibitive, we can illustrate its research value during the time it was available."