Zeeschuimer is a browser extension that monitors internet traffic while you are browsing a social media site, and collects data about the items you see in a platform’s web interface for later systematic analysis. Its target audience is researchers who wish to systematically study content on social media platforms that resist conventional scraping or API-based data collection.
This would definitely be of interest to some of my students and colleagues for the analysis of visual digital culture. Repository here.
UPDATE
I came back to this note recently to realise that Zeeschuimer can be used to get TikTok data. See the tutorial by Elena Pilipetsbelow. Data can then be plugged into 4CAT, for example, of which my department will now run an instance hosted by KCL’s eResearch, thanks to this great project led by my colleague Liliana Bounegru.
Computational moving image scholarship gathers steam!