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.
- X (formerly Twitter) advanced search (help available here)
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
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SOMAR - Social Media Archive at ICPSRSOMAR's mission is to provide a centralized and reliable repository for social media research data. The archive contains a range of data collected from large-scale social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. The data in the archive takes two forms. They can be public, i.e., available for immediate download, and/or restricted, i.e., available within our secure data enclave after receiving approval following a submitted restricted data application.
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DocNow Tweet CatalogThe DocNow Catalog is a collectively curated listing of Twitter datasets. Public datasets are shared as Tweet IDs, which can be hydrated back into full datasets using the DocNow Hydrator desktop application.
Meta Content Library and API for Facebook and Instagram
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Meta Content Library and APIIndividuals can apply to SOMAR/ICPSR for access to tools that provide near real-time public content from Facebook and Instagram.
Last Updated: Sep 24, 2025 11:58 AM