Digital Methods Initiative

Releases · digitalmethodsinitiative/4cat The 4CAT Capture and Analysis Toolkit provides modular data capture & analysis for a variety of social media platforms. - digitalmethodsinitiative/4cat

🐈‍⬛ 4CAT 1.50 is here! 🐈‍⬛

This release brings under-the-hood improvements, a faster web interface, new processors, better LLM analyses, improved annotations, and lots of bugfixes.

🔗 Full changelog: github.com/digitalmetho...

🔗 How to upgrade: github.com/digitalmetho...

Digital methods: a short introduction

Tommaso Venturini and Richard Rogers presenting their new book "Digital Methods: A Short Introduction" during the (warm!) DMI summer school 2025 #dmi25

🔔New 4CAT version: 1.49🔔

🔎 Explorer revamp: Investigate datasets through an interface that mimics the original data source. Sort your data, make manual field notes, or add processor-made annotations.
🧰 Data source updates
🦜 Zeeschuimer import fixes

Full changelog: github.com/digitalmetho...

Dertienduizend tweets in 120 dagen. Wat zegt het extreme twittergedrag van Musk over Amerika’s schaduwpresident? Musk op X: NRC analyseerde de vele duizenden tweets die de techmiljardair plaatste sinds hij begin dit jaar aantrad als informeel Trump-adviseur. Wat vertelt zijn eigen X-tijdlijn over Elon Musks poli...

🗞️ A great deep dive in Dutch newspaper @nrc.nl, in which Elon Musk's tweets over the past few months are analysed after capturing them with our tool Zeeschuimer (tools.digitalmethods.net/zeeschuimer/)!

www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

Airtable | Everyone's app platform Airtable is a low-code platform for building collaborative apps. Customize your workflow, collaborate, and achieve ambitious outcomes. Get started for free.

new database of 200+ social media research tools (via Coalition for Independent Technology Research) airtable.com/apphRmVsFpqb...
#digitalmethods #internetstudies #opensource @digitalmethods.net

Zoekplaatje

🔍Introducing Zoekplaatje: a Firefox extension that scrapes search engine data 🔍

Currently supported: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Baidu, Marginalia, Najdi & Seznam.

It also collects ✨widget data✨ from Google and Bing, like 'People also ask' and AI summaries!

👉 github.com/digitalmetho...

Testing my data collection work flow with tools from @digitalmethods.net and I am blown away.

What incredible gifts to have put into the world - thank you!

#AcademicSky
#PhDlife

2 nouveaux logiciels de nos partenaires ajoutés au catalogue d'outils du @medialab-scpo.bsky.social :
- Panoptic par le CERES pour travailler sur de gros corpus d'images
- Zeeschuimer par @digitalmethods.net pour scraper des réseaux sociaux récalcitrants

Essayez-les !
medialab.sciencespo.fr/outils/

Release v1.12.1 Pinterest fixes · digitalmethodsinitiative/zeeschuimer This public release of Zeeschuimer incorporates the following updates and fixes: Enable capture on Pinterest subdomains (e.g. https://nl.pinterest.com) Full Changelog: v1.12.0...v1.12.1

🦜 New Zeeschuimer release 🦜

📌📕 New modules for Pinterest and RedNote/Xiaohongshu!

Capture data from these platforms directly with Zeeschuimer—and export them to the newest version of 4CAT (also out now) for further analysis.

github.com/digitalmetho...

Updates automatically if installed already!

🔔 We just released a new 4CAT version, v1.47!

Some highlights:
📥 Data capture from Bluesky, Pinterest and RedNote/Xiaohongshu
🤖 Prompt-based coding and annotation of data via the OpenAI API
🛠️ New & updated data fields for datasets from TikTok, Instagram, & co

Read more: github.com/digitalmetho...

The great Romanian election TikTok replay – Public Data Lab In December 2024, the European Commission launched an investigation following “serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential elections using TikTok.” The elections…

🔍 How can creative coding techniques like soundscaping and video recomposition help us unpack political issues + influencer practices on TikTok? 🎵📹

📖 Insights from explorations w/ @publicdatalab.bsky.social around the 2024 Romanian elections at @digitalmethods.net winter school:

Vacancy — Postdoctoral Researcher in OSINT & Information Disorder Do you want to join the European Union-funded project Social Media for Democracy (SoMe4Dem) focusing on the role of social media in democracy? Then this position is for you!

Postdoctoral Researcher in OSINT & Information Disorder at Amsterdam University werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Digital Methods in Brazil – Fostering Dialogue and Connection This roundtable fosters dialogue about the current state of digital methods for Internet research in Brazil.

🇧🇷 What is the current state of #digital methods for Internet research in #Brazil?

Join @digitalculturekcl.bsky.social roundtable on 31 Jan to hear from @jannajoceliomena.bsky.social, Alan Angeluci, Elias Bitencourt, Giulia Tucci, Richard Rogers and Thais Lobo 🔽

www.kcl.ac.uk/events/digit...

✨call for papers✨ @aoir.bsky.social symposium "From Platform Governance to Generative AI: Concepts, Methods, and Data for Studying Tech Governance" with @pgmt.bsky.social @zemki.bsky.social @ckatzenbach.bsky.social Daria Dergacheva @redeker.bsky.social: platform-governance.org/aoir-flashpo...

Poster submission for the data sprint project "who's my host"

This week part of the team ventured out to participate in the #dmi25 winter school with the title "Chatbots and LLMs for Internet Research?"

Building on our #datavisualisation and #exhibitiondesign for grounding-ai.github.io, we hosted the project "Who's my host?" exploring personas across LLMs.

Room full of people working on laptops in a beautiful medieval room

Big day today
In roughly 24h, we submit our poster for the sociology benchwork with LLMs workshop

#DMI25  #Amsterdam #LLMs #Sociology

#dmi starting 2025 with Digital methods winter school! Doing a project on Femcel culture on Pinterest with Idil Galip

Richard Rogers opening Digital Methods Winter School 2025 - with image of "shrimp Jesus".

"Chatbots and LLMs for Internet Research?" - opening of
@digitalmethods.net #dmi25 at University of Amsterdam ✨🧵https://www.digitalmethods.net/

Chatbots and LLMs for Internet Research? Digital Methods Winter School and Data Sprint 2025 – Public Data Lab The annual Digital Methods Winter School in Amsterdam will take place on 6-10th January 2025 with the theme “Chatbots and LLMs for Internet Research?”. The deadline for applications is 9 December 2024...

The @digitalmethods.net Winter School in Amsterdam will take place on 6-10th January 2025 with the theme “Chatbots and LLMs for Internet Research?”. Apply by 9th December. 📝✨ publicdatalab.org/2024/11/29/d... #digitalmethods

'Gather, explore, collaborate' – new toolkit to enrich digital culture… KingsCAT is a cross-faculty initiative coordinated by the Digital Future Institute’s Centre for Digital Culture and the Department of Digital Humanities in collaboration with e-Research and…

welcome to kingscat 🐱 a new @4cat.nl instance to support collaborative social media research at King's 🎊✨
www.kcl.ac.uk/news/gather-...
created by @digitalmethods.net @oilab.bsky.social
hosted by @kingsdh.bsky.social @digitalculturekcl.bsky.social
@kingsartshums.bsky.social
#opensource #socialmedia

Release v1.11.1 Douyin maintenance · digitalmethodsinitiative/zeeschuimer This public release of Zeeschuimer incorporates the following updates and fixes: Update Douyin module to properly collect data from Search, modal dialogs, and video pages. Full Changelog: v1.11.1...

🦜 New Zeeschuimer release: v1.11.1 Douyin maintenance 🦜

The Douyin module now properly collects data from Search, modal dialogs, and video pages.

Zeeschuimer should update automatically.

github.com/digitalmetho...

This extensive website on computational social science by Michael Achmann-Denkler provides 4CAT and Zeeschuimer tutorials alongside other great tips & tricks.

Check it out 👇
social-media-lab.net

the "Spotify artist network" tool is no longer working, since Spotify has restricted access to the "related artists" API endpoint (without warning, lots of unhappy devs); I am trying to get access again, but I'm not very optimistic

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

New platform, new paper! Talking about ideal first posts :) The platformization of the follower factory with my co-author Johan Lindquist: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Screenshot from the workshop titled “how does TikTok organise its data”, with the subheadings “for you page”, “user”, “hashtag”, “keyword search” and “sound”

Fascinating workshop with @4cat.nl walking us through their social media capture and analysis tool, talking through capabilities and possibilities!

@kingsdh.bsky.social

🔔 New version out for Zeeschuimer, our tool for capturing social media data from the browser! This brings it up to speed with Instagram's latest updates, fixing the capture of posts from Location and Tag pages.

💾 Get it here: github.com/digitalmetho...
⬆️ Already installed it? It will auto-update!