February 21, Computational Social Science Lab & NetSCI Lab Talk: Deen Freelon on The Post-API Age: Past, Present, and Future
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The NetSCI Lab will co-host the Computational Social Science Lab Speaker Series and will feature Presidential Professor Deen Freelon, University of Pennsylvania, who will offer insights into The Post-API Age: Past, Present, and Future.
The Post-API Age: Past, Present, and Future
In 2018, I published a short essay titled “Computational Research in the Post-API Age” in the journal Political Communication. Its goals were simple: to warn computational researchers in the social sciences that the days of free and easily-accessible digital communication data were coming to an end, and to start a conversation about how to respond. The essay was initially inspired by the prohibition of automated data collection from Facebook’s Graph API, which occurred in March 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This corporate decision effectively eliminated most authorized means of collecting Facebook data (except those involving direct collaboration with Meta researchers) until the Crowdtangle service was opened to academic researchers in the summer of 2020. Meta shelved Crowdtangle in August 2024, replacing it with yet another data access regime, the Meta Content Library. Other social platforms, including Twitter/X, Reddit, and TikTok, have also substantially modified their data access policies over the years.
Some of the issues I raised in my Political Communication essay are still relevant today, while others are less so. I failed entirely to address still other major developments in access to digital data over the ensuing years. This presentation, which is based on a commissioned journal article, will build on my earlier piece in three ways: first, it will recount a concise history of social media data access informed by official documentation and my own professional observations as one of the first Communication researchers to analyze social media data computationally. Second, it will sketch the present state of digital communication data access in context with past such “ages,” making practical recommendations and generally characterizing the moment for posterity. The third section will be devoted to the future, but instead of making predictions, it will adopt a normative approach, advocating for corporate and governmental data access policies that balance the researcher’s interest in data usability, the public’s interests in privacy and impactful research, and business interests in transparency and good corporate citizenship.
Speaker Bio
Deen Freelon is a Presidential Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication. A widely recognized expert on digital politics and computational social science, he has authored or coauthored over 60 book chapters, funded reports, and articles in journals such as Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He was one of the first communication researchers to apply computational methods to social media data and has developed eight open-source research software packages. The first of these, ReCal, is a free online intercoder reliability service that has been running continuously since 2008 (when he was a Ph.D. student) and used by tens of thousands of researchers worldwide. He has been awarded over $6 million in research funding from grantmakers including the Knight Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the US Institute for Peace. He was a founding member and remains Senior Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of five academic research centers in the Knight Research Network (est. 2019) to receive its highest level of funding. His research and commentary have been featured in press outlets including the Washington Post, NPR, The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, Vox, USA Today, the BBC, PBS NewsHour, CBS News, NBC News, and many others. Unlike many computational social scientists, he centers questions of identity and power in his work, paying particular attention to race, gender, and ideology.
The NetSCI Lab will co-host the Computational Social Science Lab Speaker Series and will feature Presidential Professor Deen Freelon, University of Pennsylvania, who will offer insights into The Post-API Age: Past, Present, and Future.
The Post-API Age: Past, Present, and Future
In 2018, I published a short essay titled “Computational Research in the Post-API Age” in the journal Political Communication. Its goals were simple: to warn computational researchers in the social sciences that the days of free and easily-accessible digital communication data were coming to an end, and to start a conversation about how to respond. The essay was initially inspired by the prohibition of automated data collection from Facebook’s Graph API, which occurred in March 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This corporate decision effectively eliminated most authorized means of collecting Facebook data (except those involving direct collaboration with Meta researchers) until the Crowdtangle service was opened to academic researchers in the summer of 2020. Meta shelved Crowdtangle in August 2024, replacing it with yet another data access regime, the Meta Content Library. Other social platforms, including Twitter/X, Reddit, and TikTok, have also substantially modified their data access policies over the years.
Some of the issues I raised in my Political Communication essay are still relevant today, while others are less so. I failed entirely to address still other major developments in access to digital data over the ensuing years. This presentation, which is based on a commissioned journal article, will build on my earlier piece in three ways: first, it will recount a concise history of social media data access informed by official documentation and my own professional observations as one of the first Communication researchers to analyze social media data computationally. Second, it will sketch the present state of digital communication data access in context with past such “ages,” making practical recommendations and generally characterizing the moment for posterity. The third section will be devoted to the future, but instead of making predictions, it will adopt a normative approach, advocating for corporate and governmental data access policies that balance the researcher’s interest in data usability, the public’s interests in privacy and impactful research, and business interests in transparency and good corporate citizenship.
Speaker Bio
Deen Freelon is a Presidential Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication. A widely recognized expert on digital politics and computational social science, he has authored or coauthored over 60 book chapters, funded reports, and articles in journals such as Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He was one of the first communication researchers to apply computational methods to social media data and has developed eight open-source research software packages. The first of these, ReCal, is a free online intercoder reliability service that has been running continuously since 2008 (when he was a Ph.D. student) and used by tens of thousands of researchers worldwide. He has been awarded over $6 million in research funding from grantmakers including the Knight Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the US Institute for Peace. He was a founding member and remains Senior Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of five academic research centers in the Knight Research Network (est. 2019) to receive its highest level of funding. His research and commentary have been featured in press outlets including the Washington Post, NPR, The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, Vox, USA Today, the BBC, PBS NewsHour, CBS News, NBC News, and many others. Unlike many computational social scientists, he centers questions of identity and power in his work, paying particular attention to race, gender, and ideology.