Hello, reporters! I was at NICAR for most of last week, and one thing that kept coming up in conversation was social media data.
In fact, a panelist recommended Lam Thuy Vo’s book, which I’ve also been meaning to recommend for like a year now. Her publisher sent me a free copy back when it came out. (I didn’t even ask for it, they just sent me it out of the blue… I think that means I’m an influencer?)
I ended up reading it during quarantine and was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading code printed out on a page. Probably the most accessible part is Chapter 2, API calls.
An API call is like your own special, bespoke URL. It looks like this:
That’s not a super friendly URL… but basically it’s saying, “show me YouTube videos from a certain channel mentioning pancakes.” You can learn more about how to write them in Vo’s book or website.
Unfortunately these calls are like, CODE code, so you’ll have to jump through some hoops like creating a “key” and potentially writing a script to put all this data somewhere. But even just typing your own URL into a search bar can be powerful. Watch those platforms, reporters!