When Social Media Data Disappear

Deen Freelon

Research Exposed: How Empirical Social Science Gets Done in the Digital Age

Digital Infrastructures

Case Study, Methods, Twitter

Engaging with data that has been erased requires methodological creativity

This chapter in a longer, edited volume explores the quetion of how to collect data that have been erased from their primary locations on the Web, a category Freelon calls absent data. In such situations, the standard methods of data collection cannot be applied; indeed, in some cases it may not be possible to obtain absent data at all. Using an empirical case of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), Freelon offers four methods for when other, more standard methods fail.