By Bulanda T. Nkhowani – Campaigns and Partnerships Manager for Africa.
On 14 August 2024, researchers, academics and journalists across the globe bid farewell to CrowdTangle, Meta’s public insights tool that powered social media monitoring and research on information flows on Facebook and Instagram –arguably the world’s most prominent social media sites. Replacing CrowdTangle is Meta’s Content Library, which has been criticised as being less transparent and inaccessible to many because it gives lesser access to types of data that can be studied and it is restricted to academic and non-profit researchers, eliminating stakeholders like journalists from the mix.
On the other hand, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) impose similar restrictions by primarily granting access to European Union (EU) and US-based researchers or enabling costly paid options to access the platform’s Application Programming Interface (APIs). This kind of paywall is making social media research almost impossible for low-resourced non-US and EU researchers.
Understanding the potential risks of tech harms on society and democracy in the Global Majority countries during a pivotal election year such as this one is now more challenging and damning than ever. At a time when social media platforms wield significant power and influence over political discourses with little to no oversight and when mis and disinformation, hate speech and influence operations threaten information flows, it is imperative that investigators, academia, journalists and civil society enjoy equal access to data. Only in this way can we study platform harms and offer meaningful solutions to protect electoral integrity. Otherwise, what is the way forward for under-resourced researchers without the prescribed academic institutional affiliations who would like to understand the systemic risks that tech platforms pose to society and democracy?
To democratise monitoring efforts, Digital Action, through the Global Coalition for Tech Justice developed an open-source guidebook that enables social media monitoring, even for beginners! Aptly titled ‘How to Monitor Social Media during elections when you don’t have Rockstar resources’ the guide is intended for civil society organisations, journalists, academia and election authorities as a first practical introduction to conducting monitoring of online platforms on a tight budget. The guide explains how to study and spot misinformation, propaganda campaigns, harassment including online gender-based violence and deepfakes or other AI-generated content across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube. Currently available in English, French and Arabic, the guide offers practical steps to equip users with a structured framework for navigating the social media monitoring landscape from identifying and defining the problem and project goals, brainstorming a lexicon of keywords in local languages, gathering the data from direct and indirect sources across different platforms and analysing it and communicating findings.
While restrictions on data may persist and become increasingly complex, we should all push the platforms and governments for greater access and devise public interest technologies which allow for more scrutiny on social media platforms, as a means to safeguard the democratic electoral process, ensure informed decision-making and uphold ethical standards in the digital space.
** Please click here to request access to the guidebook.