Importing and Analyzing Twitter Data

Transcription

1 Importing and Analyzing Twitter Data

2 Contents IMPORTING AND ANALYZING TWITTER DATA... 1 WHAT POSSIBILITIES DOES MAXQDA OFFER FOR ANALYZING TWITTER DATA?... 1 IMPORTING TWITTER DATA... 1 AUTOCODING AND ANALYZING TWITTER DATA... 8

3 Importing and Analyzing Twitter Data What Possibilities does MAXQDA offer for Analyzing Twitter Data? MAXQDA allows you to import data directly from Twitter into an open project, and analyze this data using known MAXQDA tools. Using advanced options, you can search for tweets and selected hashtags, usernames or terms, and import these into your MAXQDA project. A notable feature is that you can automatically code the tweets with up to 100 author names and/or with up to 100 hashtags during the import process (and later if necessary). This automatic coding function is an advantage for researchers, as it saves a great deal of time in preparatory work that can be allocated instead to the actual analysis. Researchers that analyze social media data can use MAXQDA to provide answers to such questions as What content has a user, user group, company or institution posted in a given time period? How have other users reacted? Note: In order to use this function, a Twitter account is required. Importing Twitter Data To import Twitter data into a MAXQDA project, select Documents > Import data from Twitter from the main menu. 1

4 Importing data from Twitter The following dialog window will appear: Dialog window for importing data from Twitter Twitter Login In order for MAXQDA to import data directly from Twitter, you must first link your Twitter account to MAXQDA. To do so, click Connect to Twitter at the top of the dialog window. 2

5 Connect to Twitter A new browser window will open where you can enter the login data of your Twitter account. Then, click Authorize App to allow MAXQDA to receive Twitter data from your account. Authorize MAXQDA for Twitter After registration, you can close the browser window and return to MAXQDA to start importing data. Note: MAXQDA uses the connection to Twitter only for importing tweets. When you close MAXQDA, the connection will be cancelled, meaning you must reconnect to Twitter each time you restart MAXQDA. Searching for Twitter data The original dialog window that you opened in MAXQDA will remain open, indicating whose account is connected to MAXQDA. You can now check the box below the login button, which was previously greyed out. Only once you have agreed to the terms of using Twitter data neither for advertising purposes nor for personal identification can you start your search on Twitter. Once you agree to the terms, the search fields will become available. The complex search follows the same principle as the advanced Twitter search. In the 3

6 top fields, you can enter words or strings that must appear or not appear in the tweets. In the middle and lower sections, you can set define specific conditions for the search and the accounts to be searched. From these accounts searches for tweets from specific users. Multiple usernames can be entered, separated by commas. To these Accounts - searches for tweets in which the entered username appears at the beginning of the tweet. Multiple usernames can be entered, separated by commas. Mentioning these Accounts - searches for tweets in which the entered user name appears somewhere in the tweet. Multiple usernames can be entered, separated by commas. Further parameters can be set in the lower section: Language: Limits the search to the selected language (the assignment of tweets to a language is done by Twitter itself and is not verified by MAXQDA). If you wish for tweets in all languages to be taken into account, allow the default parameter Any language to remain. From/to: The default search period is set at seven days, becuase this is the maximum period allowed by Twitter s search function. You can reduce the search period, for example to one day, by adjusting the dates accordingly. Include retweets: By default, this option is not selected. If you wish to include retweets in your analysis, simply place a check mark in the appropriate checkbox at the bottom of the dialog window. (The inclusion and exclusion of retweets is managed by Twitter.) Note: All search criteria are linked with the search operator AND. This means that only tweets that meet all of the conditions entered will be retrieved. 4

7 Search window for importing data from Twitter After clicking the Run Search button, a preview window with the first 100 search results will appear. The number of tweets found is displayed on the lower left. When more than 100 search hits are found, the display is updated approximately every 10 seconds. 5

8 Preview of search results When you click Import data, MAXQDA will begin the importing the tweets. Note: An import operation is limited to 10,000 tweets. Immediately after import, a dialog window will appear with the functions for autocoding tweets. Twitter data in MAXQDA During the import process MAXQDA creates a new document group in the Document System, in which a table document is generated for every 1,000 tweets. Table document with Twitter data in the Document System To ensure transparency of the research process, the name of the document group contains the import date. A memo will also be created for the document group in which the search query is stored. 6

9 Memo of a Twitter import with the exact search query When you double-click on the document in the Document System, the Twitter data will be displayed in the Document Browser: Table document with Twitter data in the Document Browser Each imported Twitter document contains 16 columns, each of which are named in the top line. Columns 1 to 3 relate to each tweet. Columns 4 to 14 contain information about the author. Column 15 shows how many times the Tweet was 7

10 retweeted and column 16 informs you about the number of likes for the Tweet. Autocoding and Analyzing Twitter Data MAXQDA can automatically code the text of up to 100 authors and 100 hashtags from imported Twitter data. When you import Twitter data, a dialog window will appear in which you can enter the author names and hashtags you wish to autocode. Alternatively, you can call up the function from the main menu Analysis > Autocode Twitter data. Autocode Twitter data dialog window In the dialog window, all exisiting Twitter document are listed. From here, you can choose which documents you wish to autocode. If the dialog window was opened automatically following an import, the most recently imported documents are already preselected. Before you can start the autocoding process, you must first select the hashtags or author names you wish to encode. To do so, use the Select hashtags and Select Authors buttons. A new dialog window will appear, in which the selected hashtags and author names are listed: 8

11 Selecting hashtags for autocoding In the "Hashtag" column, the different hashtags are listed, and in the "Tweet" column you can see the number of tweets in which the hashtag appears. In the upper left corner you can see how many different hashtags were found in total; the top right shows how many of these hashtags are currently selected. How do you select the entries with the hashtags that are relevant to your analysis? 1. Select the desired row. As usual, you can select multiple rows by holding down the Ctrl key (Windows) or Command key ( Mac ). Your selection will be highlighted in green. 2. Click the green checkmark symbol in the upper toolbar. A green checkmark will appear in front of the the selected hashtags. This procedure can be repeated as desired, or reversed by selecting a row and clicking on the Stop icon to deselect an entry. Note that a maximum of 100 entries can be selected. When you click OK, you will return to the Autocode dialog window, where you can proceed in the same manner with author names. When at least one hastag or author name is selected, the Autocode button becomes available and can be clicked. MAXQDA then begins the autocoding process, which may take a moment depending on the number of entries. The resulting new code Autocode Twitter data with the date will be inserted at the top of the Code System. 9

12 The automatically inserted code in the Code System In the automatically generated code, "Tweet hashtag" and "Tweet author" appear as subcodes of the selected hashtags and author names. For the analysis, they are automatically sorted in descending order of frequency. The hashtags and author names that appear most often in the tweets are at the top. The codes can be managed like any other code - for example, you can change the color or arrangement, depending on what makes the most sense for your analysis. Note: From the main menu Analysis > Autocode Twitter data you can call up the autocode function as often as desired. It is therefore not necessary to perform the autocoding process immediately after import. Analyzing Twitter Data For the analysis of Twitter data, all the usual MAXQDA tools are available. For example, you can use the Simple Coding Query to determine which tweets were written by specific authors: 1. Activate one or more documents with Twitter data in the Document System. 2. Activate the codes with the relevant author names in the Code System. The result will be a compilation of all relevant tweets, which will appear in the Retrieved Segments window. If you are using MAXQDA Plus and therefore have 10

13 MAXDictio available, you can use this compilation of tweets to perform a simple word frequency analysis. Select MAXDictio > Word frequencies and check the option "Only in Retrieved Segments". 11