Public App
Open Measures' open-source, free, Public App for analyzing fringe content
Last updated
Open Measures' open-source, free, Public App for analyzing fringe content
Last updated
Important to note: to mitigate the threat of bad actors, the Public App is rate-limited to 39 requests per day and date-limited to data that is at least six months old. Get in touch with us if you'd like to learn about a non-rate-limited version of the Public App.
Open Source Analysis UI: https://gitlab.com/openmeasures/frontends/openmeasures-vue
Open Measures offers four open-sourced Analysis Tools via the Public App: Timeline, Search, Link Counter and Activity. In the following sections we will look at how to use each tool.
To quickly pivot between tools, use the dropdown in the upper-left corner.
There are three types of searches you can perform: basic, boolean, and advanced. In the API, these map to the querytype parameter.
A basic search will return matches when the keyword is present in a user's post (referred to as the "content field").
A Boolean search is an extension of the Basic search. It uses keywords and operators to narrow or broaden parameters of searches in the content field. The special operators that will be interpreted by a Boolean search are AND and OR, with clauses grouped using parenthesis.
An example search:
(qanon OR wwg1wga) AND (election OR vote)
The advanced search option will interpret the input as a raw query. This means that it will search across all fields available in the document unless otherwise specified.
The key fields for each source can be found on the Datasets page, and the full list can be obtained by hitting the API content endpoint.
An example search within the Telegram dataset:
(channelusername:QanonWorld) AND (message:election)
The Timeline tool is like Google Trends for the fringe internet, showing the frequency that a term is used over time on a given platform. It's very helpful at spotting emergent trends and analyzing historic peaks in activity.
To use the Timeline tool, first enter a search term. Then, select the period of time you want to search over and select the platform(s) you would like to view. Click See Timeline Results for a graph that will show the frequency of the search term in posts from our dataset over the selected time period.
At the bottom of the left-hand menu you can choose the interval between plotted points in the line graph. You can download a CSV of the results by scrolling to the table view of raw data or download a PNG of the graph by clicking the button on the bottom-right of the graphic (see image below).
The Search tool helps users surface content containing a search term across individual platforms.
To use the Search tool: enter a search term, choose the period of time, and choose which platform you want to see posts from. Then, click the "See Search Results" button at the bottom of the menu on the left.
The Search tool allows you to look at up to 50 pieces of content from the available platforms. Flipping between different platforms on the same search term allows you to gauge the discourse around a topic or name across the fringe internet. Users looking for more than 50 pieces of content at a time should use the Research Dashboard or Pro API.
The Link Counter tool uses a search term to return a bar graph counting links in posts that contain the search term.
To use the Link Counter: enter a search term and select the time period and platforms of interest. Then, select the number of URLs you would like to view, choose whether you would like to view complete URLs or just the hosts, and click See URLs Graph at the bottom of the menu on the left.
The Activity tool displays a breakdown of which users are most frequently using a given term on each platform. The Activity tool is a powerful way to see who is attempting to influence discourse or incite action around a certain topic.
To use the Activity tool: enter a search term, select the time period and platforms of interest, and click See Activity at the bottom of the menu on the left. For platforms like 4chan where most users are anonymous, results are filtered out to show only users with handles.
