Skip to content

The politics of Twitter data

Author: Puschmann, C. & Burgess, J.
Published in: Weller, K., Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Mahrt, M., & Puschmann, C. (Eds.), Twitter and Society (pp. 43-54). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Year: 2013
Type: Book contributions and chapters

Our paper approaches Twitter through the lens of “platform politics” (Gillespie, 2010), focusing in particular on controversies around user data access, ownership, and control. We characterise different actors in the Twitter data ecosystem: private and institutional end users of Twitter, commercial data resellers such as Gnip and DataSift, data scientists, and finally Twitter, Inc. itself; and describe their conflicting interests. We furthermore study Twitter’s Terms of Service and application programming interface (API) as material instantiations of regulatory instruments used by the platform provider and argue for a more promotion of data rights and literacy to strengthen the position of end users.

Download Publication

Publication

Connected HIIG researchers

Cornelius Puschmann, Dr.

Associated Researcher: The evolving digital society



    Explore current HIIG Activities

    Research issues in focus

    HIIG is currently working on exciting topics. Learn more about our interdisciplinary pioneering work in public discourse.