Canadian Media Observatory Tracks Online Chatter (But Facebook's Ghosting the Party)

Overview

Paper Summary › Explain Like I'm Five › Conflicts of Interest › Identified Limitations › Rating Explanation › Good to know › Topic Hierarchy › File Information ›

Paper Summary

Paperzilla title

This paper describes the creation of a Canadian Media Ecosystem Observatory to track online political discourse across multiple platforms like X/Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. A key limitation is the incomplete Facebook data due to API access changes.

Explain Like I'm Five

Researchers built a system to track online political talk in Canada, like a giant ear listening to social media. It's good at listening to most platforms, but Facebook's being quiet.

Possible Conflicts of Interest

None identified. The authors are academics at McGill University.

Identified Limitations

Data Volatility

The dynamic nature of social media means posts can be deleted, accounts privatized, and engagement metrics altered, creating potential data drift and hindering perfect replication of results.

Incomplete Facebook Data

Due to the discontinuation of CrowdTangle and challenges with alternative solutions, there's a gap in Facebook data collection after August 2024, hindering a complete view of online discussions.

Reliance on Scraping

For platforms like Instagram and X/Twitter, data collection relies on scraping, which is less stable than API access and susceptible to platform changes or anti-scraping measures, potentially affecting data quality and consistency.

Seed List Limitations

While aiming for comprehensive coverage, the seed list excludes municipal politicians from smaller towns and may not capture all news outlets, limiting the scope of analysis, particularly at the local level.

Rating Explanation

This is a valuable contribution describing an important data infrastructure project, but the significant data gap for Facebook and reliance on scraping for several platforms warrant a moderate rating. The authors transparently acknowledge these limitations.

Good to know

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Topic Hierarchy

Domain: Social Sciences

Field: Social Sciences

Subfield: Communication

File Information

Original Title: Building a Media Ecosystem Observatory from Scratch: A Data Infrastructure for Cross-Platform Analysis

Uploaded: September 13, 2025 at 07:54 PM

Privacy: Public