University of Michigan (The Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research at University of Michigan)

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan will build a streaming data collection and analysis pipeline to enhance the functionality of the Social Media Archive (SOMAR). SOMAR aims to balance social media data privacy and reuse by building an active data collection system and enhancing search and analysis capabilities within SOMAR’s virtual data enclave. Beyond the period of the award, the datasets and services generated to democratize researcher access to social media data will remain in the ICPSR ecosystem. The project team also will produce code and documentation that empower other archives to adapt these tools for their own technical infrastructures and unique data challenges. The project will target social science researchers who can employ social media data and computational methodologies in analyzing complex social issues nationally and internationally. This project facilitates research into significant social phenomena by providing tools for large dataset analysis while addressing privacy and computational resource disparities.