twitterresearch

A starter kit with code for data collection, preparation, and analysis of digital trace data collected on Twitter.

This kit complements a full-length tutorial which can be found on SSRN

Getting Started

There is a set of working usage examples in the file examples.py

1. Install requirements: pip3 install -r requirements.txt
2. (optional) install ipython pip3 install -U ipython
3. start python
4. Import libraries, such as import rest, streaming
5. Use functions, for example:

archive = rest.fetch_user_archive("lessig")
for page in archive:
    for tweet in page:
        print(u"{0}: {1}".format(tweet["user"]["screen_name"], tweet["text"]))

FAQ

• I'm getting unicode errors on windows, what can I do?
  Make sure that your windows install of python can print unicode characters to screen without throwing errors. If in doubt, this library might help.

You are free to use and adapt the scripts provided in our twitterresearch package in your research. If you do so, please cite the package by providing the following information:

Pascal Jürgens and Andreas Jungherr. 2016. twitterresearch [Computer software]. Retrieved from https://github.com/trifle/twitterresearch

If you want to cite this tutorial please provide the following information:

Pascal Jürgens and Andreas Jungherr. 2016. A Tutorial for Using Twitter Data in the Social Sciences: Data Collection, Preparation, and Analysis. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2710146