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Social Media Research Guide

Guide to sources of social media data including X (Formerly Twitter), Facebook and others as well as resources on research methods and using social media data ethically in scholarship

What Does X (Formerly Twitter) Make Available?

In order to view or search posts on X (formerly Twitter) you have to have an individual account.

As of 2023 the Twitter API is no longer freely available to academic researchers. For information on the cost for access see Twitter Data For Academic Research

Curated Twitter Collections for Research

Brandwatch (U-M Access Only) for Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr

Brandwatch replaces Meltwater for social media searching and analytics

The Library has 10 queries/projects that we can make available to our researchers in Brandwatch, a social media listening tool. Brandwatch has full firehose data for Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr back to July 2010. Brandwatch does not have Facebook or Instagram data. 

Fill out this form to request access to a query. Brandwatch can be used for academic research only.

Your access to Brandwatch will be limited in time and then your query will be deleted to make room for the next interested researcher. Brandwatch sets strict limits on downloads. Brandwatch is not a good source for exporting large amounts of tweets, the Twitter API or Twitter Decahose are better options.

Brandwatch can be used by researchers from the Ann Arbor, Flint and Dearborn campuses.

If you're affiliated with Ross you should access Brandwatch through the account managed by the Kresge Library