Offer free data access for academic research: Researchers urge X
23 Feb 2025

A group of researchers from Saarland University in Germany, has called for unrestricted access to data from social media platform X.

The team's research was abruptly halted in June 2023 when Elon Musk, who acquired the platform in October 2022, denied free access to its data for academic purposes.

The researchers were investigating if the platform favored tweets from right-leaning politicians between 2021 and 2023.

Lead researcher criticizes selective data access
Data accessibility

Ingmar Weber, the lead researcher and a professor of artificial intelligence (AI) at Saarland University, criticized the current state of data access.

He said it's unacceptable for such vast amounts of data to be either unaffordable or offered so selectively that no meaningful analyzes can be conducted.

The team has called for legislation to ensure academic researchers can regain access to social network data.

Researchers analyzed tweets from over 6,500 accounts
Study details

Before their research was halted, the team had analyzed tweets from 6,550 X accounts associated with approximately 8,600 politicians from 12 countries with high user activity.

These nations included India, Argentina, Germany and the US.

Their findings were published in the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media and revealed no significant bias in content dissemination between left-leaning or right-leaning politicians across the analyzed nations.

Study reveals changes in user engagement
Engagement shift

The study observed spike in the number of likes, a minor increase in the likes-per-retweet ratio, and a drop in retweets after Musk's takeover.

Brahmani Nutakki, a study author and computer scientist at Saarland University, said these changes could stem from early followers of an X account being more politically engaged and actively supporting content.

But as the political message reaches a wider audience, the more likely it is that the number of likes will rise while retweet rate falls.

Researchers faced challenges due to changes post-acquisition
Study obstacles

The research team faced challenges in their analysis due to changes made between November 2022 and June 2023, after Musk's takeover.

One major change was the removal of rules against hateful conduct.

Nutakki noted that these changes to X's functionality also led to changes in the user population, making it difficult to attribute the observed changes to a single specific cause.

Political content reached wider audience post-changes
Audience expansion

The study also found that political content on the platform reached a wider audience after these changes.

Weber said that before June 2023, they found no evidence of a significant difference in engagement patterns between users on the left and those on the right of the political spectrum.

However, he stressed need for academic analysis of X's data for "continuous scrutiny," amid media reports of increased engagement for posts by Republican politicians over Democrats or a rise in hate content.