Public App

Open Measures' open-source, free, Public App for analyzing social media content

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 to learn about options for more robust access.

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 review how to use each tool.

To quickly pivot between tools, use the dropdown in the upper-left corner.

Search Term Options

There are three types of searches you can perform: basic, boolean, and advanced. In the API, these map to the querytype parameter.

Basic

A basic search will return matches when the keyword is present in a user's post (referred to as the "content field").

Boolean

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 include AND and OR, with clauses grouped using parentheses.

An example search followed by additional boolean operators:

(qanon OR wwg1wga) AND (election OR vote)

Operator

Description

Example

Example Explained

“”

Must be used to search for an exact phrase that contains multiple words

"united states of america"

Results that contain the exact phrase "united states of america"

AND

All conditions must be met in order for a result to match

"america" AND "immigration"

Results that contain both the word "america" and "immigration

At least one condition must be met in order for a result to match

"america" OR "immigration"

Results that contain either "america" or "immigration"

NOT

The conditions cannot match

"america" AND NOT "immigration"

Results that contain "america" but do not also contain "immigration"

Wildcard search used to replace letter(s) and find variations of a word

america*

Results that contain "america" and may also contain "american" or "americana"

()

Groups keywords together and allows for the control of the order of search terms

("america" OR "immigration") AND "border"

Results that contain either "america" or "immigration", and also contain "border"

Advanced

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 full list of fields can be obtained by using the API content endpoint.

An example search within the Telegram dataset:

(channelusername:QanonWorld) AND (message:election)

Timeline

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 helpful in spotting emergent trends and analyzing historic peaks in activity.

To use the Timeline tool, enter a search term. Then, select a period of time 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).

Search

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 internet.

Link Counter

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.

Activity

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 to show only users with usernames.

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Last updated 4 months ago

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