Expert Working Group | 16. May 2025
Against the Odds: How to Collect Social Media Data
Social Media Scrabble
"Social Media, Social Media Marketing" CC0 Creator: hookle.app (@hookle)
Against the Odds: How to Collect Social Media Data
Online Exchange, May 16, 2025, 2:00–3:30 pm (CEST)
The collection of social media data has never been easy, but recent developments have made data-driven research on social media particularly challenging: the rightward shift and political alignment of certain platforms with current U.S. policies, lengthy application procedures for accessing content libraries of individual platforms, platform-specific and rapidly changing regulations, as well as the uncertainties, challenges, and hopes surrounding the Digital Services Act — to name just a few.
This online exchange, organized by the Social Media Data Working Group within NFDI4Culture, will discuss how data collection can still be successful under these conditions, what legally secure approaches might look like, and which practical solutions could be pursued. The event will take place on May 16 at 2:00 pm (CEST) in a protected discussion space.
We invite researchers to share their experiences in dealing with these challenges — or to present specific problems or questions — in brief input statements of no more than five minutes. The workshop aims to offer an open and low-threshold platform for exchange within the social media research community.
Confirmed contributions include inputs from Dr. Katrin Weller (GESIS, Cologne) and Prof. Dr. Stefan Dietze (HHU Düsseldorf). Among the guests will be Dr. iur. Oliver Vettermann from NFDI4Culture, who will provide legal assessments.
If you would like to contribute a short input or would like to raise methodological questions, please send an email with your name and project description by May 12, 2025, to Philippe Genêt (P.Genet@dnb.de) and Vincent Fröhlich (vincent.froehlich@staff.uni-marburg.de).
If you would like to participate mainly as an attendee, please register here:
https://adwmainz.zoom.us/meeting/register/RkvvRBjaQ-qD3Iev9ukZHg
Organized in cooperation with:
BERD@NFDI – NFDI Consortium for Business, Economic and Related Data
KonsortSWD – Konsortium für die Sozial-, Verhaltens-, Bildungs- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften
NFDI4Culture – Konsortium für Forschungsdaten materieller und immaterieller Kulturgüter
Text+ – Konsortium für text- und sprachbasierte Forschungsdaten