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Platform-controlled social media APIs threaten open science

Social media data enable insights into human behaviour. Researchers can access these data via platform-provided application programming interfaces (APIs), but these come with restrictive usage terms that mean studies cannot be reproduced or replicated. Platform-owned APIs hinder access, transparency and scientific knowledge.

Social media (SM) data hold tremendous value for studying behavioural patterns over time and across contexts at individual, group and population levels1,2. For example, these data can be used to examine where conflict is likely to occur; where to allocate aid in the event of natural disaster; and how online polarization or misinformation affect voting patterns. SM data are thus relevant to a broad range of disciplines in the social and behavioural sciences.

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Fig. 1: Accessing SM data.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Darja Wischerath, Daniel Racek, Douglas A. Parry.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Brittany I. Davidson, Darja Wischerath, Emily Godwin, Joanne Hinds & Laura Ayravainen

  2. Department of Statistics, Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, Munich, Germany

    Daniel Racek

  3. Department of Information Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Douglas A. Parry

  4. Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK

    Dirk van der Linden

  5. BT Applied Research, Ipswich, UK

    Jonathan F. Roscoe

  6. Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Alicia G. Cork

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Contributions

B.I.D. conceptualized the work; B.I.D., D.W., D.R., J.H. and D.A.P. wrote the original draft; B.I.D., D.R., D.A.P., D.W., E.G., J.F.R., J.H., D.v.d.L., A.G.C. and L.A reviewed and edited all later versions of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to
Brittany I. Davidson.

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Competing interests

This work was part-funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC grant ref: EP/W522090/1) as a PhD studentship to D.W. as an EPSRC iCASE with B.I.D. and J.F.R. This work also was part-funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC grant ref: EP/SO22465/1) as a PhD studentship to E.G. via the CDT in Cybersecurity TIPS-at-scale. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Cornelius Puschmann, Amelia Acker and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Davidson, B.I., Wischerath, D., Racek, D. et al. Platform-controlled social media APIs threaten open science.
Nat Hum Behav (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01750-2

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  • Published: 02 November 2023

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01750-2

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