Update to Tooling: Multiplatform Data Availability

When we launched our new Search tool on January 1, 2023, we designed it with the goal that researchers should be able to derive data and insights across platforms. At the time of launch, we were able to include our own news media database, the Pushshift archive of Reddit, Twitter’s academic API, and YouTube’s publicly available API. As of now, November 2023, research access to X (formerly known as Twitter) and Reddit data is no longer publicly available as before. As a result, we have disabled the tabs in our Search tool to find and retrieve results from those platforms. The limited YouTube API is still available and searchable in our tool. And of course, the global news database that we maintain and that is the core of our project is still accessible through our Search tool. 

As data access evolves on the open web and via APIs, Media Cloud will continue to strive for cross-platform operability for research users. If you study the impacts of media technology on society, we encourage you to join the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, a group created in response to large social media companies limiting research access.