Analyzing the billions of social media posts published daily online provides essential data for modern researchers-and this book gives you the tools to build a panoramic view of the digital-community discourse out there waiting to be discovered. Social Media Observatory is an in-depth beginner’s guide to coding web applications that monitor commentary on the major platforms in real time, giving you unparalleled insights into the cultural and political conversations of our time, then empowering you to reach your own conclusions. You’ll first set up a working observatory for public channels on the instant messaging app Telegram, then incorporate Instagram and Twitter with help from the Wayback Machine. You’ll detect Twitter bots via account birth charts, extract text-embedded URLs for analysis, plot interactive Telegram networks to enumerate media bubbles, and map the structure of a social movement on Instagram. Finally, you’ll deploy your observatory to a remote server to collaborate with other investigators.
