How Developers, Researchers Used Twitter’s Covid-19 Stream Endpoint

Twitter shared details on how some developers and researchers used the Covid-19 stream endpoint it released last April. The endpoint was available by application only, and new applications are no longer being accepted as Twitter prepares to roll out its academic research product track, but many of those with access are still using the endpoint. More than 100 researchers and developer teams from 30 countries were granted access after being reviewed for four criteria: Does the application demonstrate familiarity with the Twitter API (application-programming interface) and the computational resources required to handle the consumption of a high volume of unstructured data in real-time?Does this project require this level of data access, and is it otherwise not possible to accomplish with the standard v1.1 API?Does the applicant understand the sensitivity of this data and have a clear plan of how to handle it in a safe manner compliant with Twitter’s developer policy?Will the data be used to benefit the public good? Roughly 8% of approved applications were for non-academic organizations or independent developers and researchers who intended to use the data for projects such as building apps, dashboards, resources and tools to be made available to the public free of charge. One example of this was Clarabridge, which leveraged the data for its Social Pulse on Covid-19. The social network shared some other ways data from its endpoint was used: The University of Washington Center for an Informed Public explored what drove viral misinformation about Covid-19, including how influential people politicized scientific facts.Researchers from Northeastern University, Harvard University, Northwestern University and Rutgers University examined how misinformation enters the social media ecosystem, how far it spreads and the types of Twitter accounts that spread it. Their study of over 30 million tweets found that 80% to 90% of “fake news” comes from a few tenths of 1% of all accounts sharing information about the virus.The Department of Computer Science at University of Southern California explored how to identify unreliable or misleading content, patterns in how this information spreads emerging trends in misleading content about Covid-19 (see their research publication) and identifying coordinated disinformation campaigns (see their research publication).Manlio De Domenico, Head of the CoMuNe Lab with the Bruno Kessler Foundation, used this data to create the Covid-19 Infodemic Observatory, which analyzes geolocalized tweets, aggregated at the country level, to estimate the fraction of automated posts taking place in the public discussion (e.g., bots) and to estimate the average sentiment of tweets and volume of reliable sources of information.Penn Medicine created an in-depth regional map of Covid-19 attitudes and perceptions in the U.S. The intent of the dashboard is that it can be used to inform potential public policy and health communications. Check out the case study. Twitter product marketing manager, developer and enterprise solutions Nathalia Oliveira and senior program manager, developer and enterprise solutions Leanne Trujillo said in a blog post, “More recently, we see more researchers shifting from the study of the virus itself (such as a study of reported symptoms) to the study of topics like vaccinations, public safety measures and economic recovery.” They added, “The study of the coronavirus and its adjacent topics will continue for quite some time. We’ve observed that at the beginning of the pandemic, much of the work was focused on symptoms, perceptions of the virus and credibility of new information. Today, much of that conversation has shifted to the societal impacts that this pandemic has had and perceptions of vaccinations. In all of these cases, the Twitter Developer Platform continues to support developers and researchers who want to use it to improve the future.”

Coronavirus

How Developers, Researchers Used Twitter’s Covid-19 Stream Endpoint

The social network released it last April, by application only

David Cohen

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David Cohen