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Gelman Library will be closed May 17 - August 17, 2025, for a significant HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system maintenance project. During this time, library services and resources will be available. Visit the Summer Closure 2025 webpage for information on how to access materials and services.

Collecting Social Media Data

GW Libraries can help you collect social media data for research, archiving, and academic purposes. 

Social Feed Manager

Please note that due to changes made by Twitter (now X), collecting Tweets from the API is no longer free for researchers. Any researchers wishing to collect Twitter data via Social Feed Manager or other means will need to pay the per-user fee as required by Twitter/X. See the Twitter API documentation for more information 

If you’re studying Twitter (now X), Tumblr, Flickr, or Sina Weibo, you can collect data for your research using Social Feed Manager (SFM). SFM was developed by GW Libraries to harvest data and websites from public social media APIs (data feeds). You can:

  • Collect data without having to run and monitor software on your own computer. 
  • Download data in CSV, Excel, and JSON formats.
  • Document collection parameters and changes to your collection.  

If you have questions about the Social Feed Manager project please contact usMore information about SFM.  

We can also recommend strategies for collecting social media from other platforms, such as Instagram, and from the Twitter Academic Research Product Track. 

Other Social Media Research Support

  • Instructional support: If your class is studying Twitter or other social media platforms, we can give a class session on how to use existing datasets, and provide your class with data for academic use.
  • Grant proposals: We can provide advice for your grant proposal involving gathering social media data.
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