Twitter Invites Researchers Around the World to Join Analyzing The Platform

Twitter has again attracted many researchers to join in studying the governance of the platform. (photo: doc.unsplash)

JAKARTA - Twitter has again attracted many researchers to join in studying platform governance through the Twitter Moderation Research Consortium (TMRC). The TMRC is a group of experts from across academia, civil society, non-governmental organizations, and journalism.

Previously, membership in TMRC was limited to trusted and selected partners, but Twitter is now starting to offer researchers around the world the opportunity to register.

To be admitted to TMRC, applicants must prove that they are affiliated with one of several eligible organizations, have prior experience analyzing data and certain public interest use cases for data, and use industry standard systems to protect their research.

However, those who do not qualify include undergraduate students, industry and government officials, as well as groups planning to share TMRC data with the government or other outside parties.

To date, TMRC has given tens of thousands of researchers access to 52 datasets spanning nine terabytes of media and more than 220 million Tweets.

"All with one goal in mind, empowering an unprecedented level of empirical research into state-supported attacks on the integrity of conversations on Twitter," Twitter said in its official blog, Friday, September 23.

Once accepted, newly formed TMRC members will gain access to Twitter's operating data archive. The company said it will continue to support disclosure of data relating to persistent platform manipulation campaigns.

Especially on content posted in violation of manipulation and spam policies, especially in the future the company will share data about other policy areas, such as tweets that have been labeled as potentially misleading, with all TMRC members.

"Our goal is to remain transparent about the activity we identify on Twitter while addressing the sizeable safety, security, and integrity challenges that come with this kind of disclosure," Twitter said.

To date, TMRC has been operating in a pilot capacity, sharing Twitter data with members including the Stanford Internet Observatory on accounts that the social network removed in connection with platform manipulation and state-backed information operations.