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Twitter Expands Access to Data for Academic Research

Twitter is now expanding access to its archives for academic researchers. The move allows free access to public posts previously available to its premium customers.

the twitter logo under a magnifying glass
Shutterstock/Mr. Tempter
Twitter will now grant academic researchers full access to its archives for free, the company announced Tuesday.

The new Academic Research track through Twitter's API will allow researchers to view public data, including a full history of public conversations previously available to customers who purchased premium access. The feature will also include advanced search settings to filter relevant data. 

The social media giant has given academic researchers access to data to study topics like state-backed efforts to disrupt political discourse during elections, public attitudes about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and how to encourage healthy public discourse. Today, academic researchers are one of the largest groups of people using Twitter's application programming interface, or API, according to the company.

“Our developer platform hasn’t always made it easy for researchers to access the data they need, and many have had to rely on their own resourcefulness to find the right information,” a company blog post read.   

According to Twitter, users will have higher levels of access to the Twitter developer platform, including a monthly Tweet volume cap of 10 million, or 20x higher than what’s available on the standard product track. 

These new features are part of the social media giant’s continuing efforts to improve its API, first introduced in 2006. 

“The release of the Academic Research product track is just a starting point,” the company said in its blog post. “This initial solution is intended to address the most requested, biggest challenges faced when conducting research on the platform.” 

The archive will be available to graduate students and faculty at universities and research institutions. Researchers can apply for access. 

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