rtoot - Collecting and Analyzing Mastodon Data
Description
An implementation of calls designed to collect and organize Mastodon data via its Application Program Interfaces (API), which can be found at the following URL: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/.
Keywords
- Mastodon
- Decentralized Social Network
- Social Media Data
Science Usecase(s)
Although not using this package, the data from the Mastodon API has been used in various social science publications on platform migration (e.g. La Cava et al. 2023) and online network formation (e.g. La Cava, et al. 2021).
Repository structure
This repository follows the standard structure of an R package.
Environment Setup
With R installed:
install.packages("rtoot")Input Data
No applicable.
Sample Input and Output Data
As a data collection software, this tool does not have any “sample input”.
The output from this software is a standard tibble of data collected from the Mastodon API.
How to Use
Please refer to the “Introduction to rtoot” for a comprehensive introduction of the package.
In general, one should first conduct the authentication to obtain an access token. This can be done with the provided function auth_setup(). For more information, please refer to the documentation on authentication.
However, it is also possible to use some of functions with authentication. For example, it is possible to obtain the public timeline of a Mastodon instance, e.g. emacs.ch.
library(rtoot)
get_timeline_public(instance = "emacs.ch")# A tibble: 20 × 29
id uri created_at content visibility sensitive spoiler_text
<chr> <chr> <dttm> <chr> <chr> <lgl> <chr>
1 11264208… http… 2024-06-19 07:23:24 "<p>Wh… public FALSE ""
2 11264208… http… 2024-06-19 07:23:19 "<p>L'… public FALSE ""
3 11264208… http… 2024-06-19 07:23:05 "<p><a… public FALSE ""
4 11264208… http… 2024-06-19 07:23:04 "<p>Wo… public FALSE ""
5 11264208… http… 2024-06-19 07:22:59 "<p>Ja… public FALSE ""
6 11264208… http… 2024-06-19 07:22:54 "<p>Al… public FALSE ""
7 11264208… http… 2024-06-19 07:04:28 "<p>Ru… public FALSE ""
8 11264208… http… 2024-06-19 07:22:35 "<p>Re… public FALSE ""
9 11264208… http… 2024-06-19 07:22:27 "<p>🎶… public FALSE ""
10 11264208… http… 2024-06-19 07:22:23 "<p>Ne… public FALSE ""
11 11264208… http… 2024-06-19 07:22:19 "<p>I … public FALSE ""
12 11264207… http… 2024-06-19 07:22:11 "<p><a… public FALSE ""
13 11264207… http… 2024-06-19 07:22:08 "So, W… public FALSE ""
14 11264207… http… 2024-06-19 07:22:02 "<p>Gi… public FALSE ""
15 11264207… http… 2024-06-19 07:22:00 "<p>\"… public FALSE ""
16 11264207… http… 2024-06-19 07:21:58 "<p>Fe… public FALSE ""
17 11264207… http… 2024-06-19 07:21:48 "Wow i… public FALSE ""
18 11264207… http… 2024-06-19 07:21:49 "<p>Sy… public FALSE ""
19 11264207… http… 2024-06-19 07:21:29 "<a cl… public FALSE ""
20 11264207… http… 2024-06-19 07:21:45 "<p><a… public FALSE ""
# ℹ 22 more variables: reblogs_count <int>, favourites_count <int>,
# replies_count <int>, url <chr>, in_reply_to_id <chr>,
# in_reply_to_account_id <chr>, language <chr>, text <lgl>,
# application <I<list>>, poll <I<list>>, card <I<list>>, account <list>,
# reblog <I<list>>, media_attachments <I<list>>, mentions <I<list>>,
# tags <I<list>>, emojis <I<list>>, favourited <lgl>, reblogged <lgl>,
# muted <lgl>, bookmarked <lgl>, pinned <lgl>Other functions, e.g. get_timeline_hashtag(), get_account_statuses() require authentication.
Contact Details
Maintainer: David Schoch david@schochastics.net
Issue Tracker: https://github.com/gesistsa/rtoot/issues
Publication
- Schoch, D., & Chan, C. H. (2023). Software presentation: Rtoot: Collecting and analyzing Mastodon data. Mobile Media & Communication, 11(3), 575-578. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579231176678