Tools

4CAT

4CAT is a tool that can be used to analyse and process data from, primarily, social media for research purposes. It provides a suite of modules through which text, images, video, and sound can be analysed. The goal is to provide a straightforward aid for social media research accessible to people without a programming background, such as humanities researchers and students, OSINT practitioners, and journalists.

This tool requires server installation.

  • 4CAT has its own website at https://4cat.nl.
  • Code and installation instructions are available on GitHub.
  • This video playlist collects tutorial videos for 4CAT.
  • See also the browser extension for social media scraping Zeeschuimer, which works well with 4CAT.

DMI-TCAT

The Digital Methods Initiative Twitter Capture and Analysis Toolset (DMI-TCAT) allows one to retrieve and collect tweets from Twitter and to analyze them in various ways.

This tool requires server installation.

  • Code and installation instructions are available on github.
  • Frequently Asked Questions are addressed here.
  • This video playlist collects several instruction videos for different use cases.

YouTube Data Tools

A collection of simple tools for extracting data from the YouTube platform via YouTube’s API. Modules include video list compilation, channel and video networks, and comment extraction.

  • A running version can be used here.
  • Source code and instructions for running your own instance are on github.
  • Frequently Asked Questions are addressed here.
  • This introductory video provides an overview of most features and how to use them.