The transformation of Twitter into X has reduced the opportunities for harvesting social media for research purposes, but there is still much that can be done. This workshop will introduce you to some methods, tools, and approaches.

Objectives: you will gain:

1. Basic knowledge of the affordances of several methods of social media harvesting.

2. Basic knowledge of the kinds of data than can be harvested from different social media platforms.

3. Introduction to approaches to managing the data that is harvested.

Completion of this workshop can contribute to a partial requirement of the University of Alberta Professional Development program by the Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies (GPS). Information on how attendance will be recorded will be discussed in the workshop.

About the Instructor: Peter Binkley is the Digital Scholarship Technologies Librarian, and has been a librarian at the U of A for 24 years. His focus is on helping students and researchers apply digital techniques to their scholarship (broadly defined). This includes areas like the sharing of research online using durable static websites, the use of core digital tools like git and python, and most recently the use of local Large Language Models to apply AI techniques to research problems safely and securely. He has an MLIS and a Ph.D. (in Medieval Studies, working on 13th- and 14th-century Latin texts and manuscripts). Any questions about the workshop can be directed to peter.binkley@ualberta.ca.