ABSTRACT

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms worldwide, making it a key site for social examination. Despite this, scholarly conversations about analysing Instagram data remain scarce, with existing research focusing on text-driven platforms such as Twitter.

This year, Instagram permanently disabled access to its Legacy API. For users, this has been hailed as positive, increasing privacy and control. However, these actions have unintentional impacts on research, creating significant access barriers. How researchers continue to engage with Instagram data as ‘personal data’ is a central question, particularly in light of global privacy events like Cambridge Analytica.

This article contributes to emerging discussions about approaching visual social media, responding to ethical and policy challenges of Instagram data. It details the process of accessing, archiving and anonymising Instagram data from a three-year platform study. Social research now encounters multiple commercial gatekeepers, where third-party applications are pivotal, and paywalls widen access inequalities.

摘要

Instagram是全球最受欢迎的社交媒体平台之一，使其成为社交考试的重要站点。尽管如此，有关分析Instagram数据的学术讨论仍然很少，而现有研究集中在文本驱动平台（例如Twitter）上。

今年，Instagram永久禁止访问其旧版API。对于用户而言，这被誉为积极的，增加了隐私和控制权。但是，这些行动会对研究产生意外影响，从而造成重大的访问障碍。研究人员如何继续使用Instagram数据作为“个人数据”是一个中心问题，尤其是考虑到Cambridge Analytica等全球隐私事件。

本文有助于开展有关使用视觉社交媒体，应对Instagram数据的道德和政策挑战的新兴讨论。它详细介绍了一项为期三年的平台研究得出的访问，归档和匿名化Instagram数据的过程。社会研究现在遇到了多个商业看门人，在这些应用中，第三方应用程序至关重要，支付壁垒扩大了访问不平等的范围。