The Social Media Research Toolkit is a list of 50+ social media research tools curated by researchers at the Social Media Lab at Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University. The kit features tools that have been used in peer-reviewed academic studies. Many tools are free to use and require little or no programming. Some are simple data collectors such as tweepy, a Python library for collecting tweets and others are a bit more robust such as Netlytic, a multi-platform (Twitter, YouTube, RSS Feed, or text/csv file) data collector and analyzer, developed by our lab. All of the tools are confirmed available and operational.
(*Newly added 2021)
| Num. of Citations | Name | Description | Coding Req? | Platforms | Tool Type | Analysis Type | Misc. Features | Export | Pricing | System Req. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24700 | Gephi | Gephi is the leading visualization and exploration software for all kinds of graphs and networks. Gephi is open-source and free. | X | N/A (Must import datasets) | Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery | Exploratory Data Analysis, Link Analysis and Biological Network analysis | .CSV | Free | Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. On Windows Java 7 or 8 is required Hardware requirements: 500 MHz CPU + 128 MB RAM + OpenGL 1.2 |
| 16700 | Hootsuite | Enhance your social media management with Hootsuite, the leading social media dashboard. | X | Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | N/A | Real-time Analysis, Performance Analysis (Follower Growth, Followers Report) | .PCSV, .PDF | Free + Pay | Web Accessible |
| 7440 | NodeXL | NodeXL is a free, open-source template for Microsoft® Excel® 2007 and 2010 that makes it easy to explore network graphs. With NodeXL, you can enter a network edge list in a worksheet, click a button and see your graph, all in the familiar environment of the Excel window. | X | Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Vimeo | Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | N/A | GraphML, Pajek, UCINet, and matrix formats.JPG, .PNG, .EPS, etc. | Free | Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8; Office 2007 or 2010 or 2013 |
| 3000 | Brandwatch / Crimson Hexagon | Get deep insights into consumer opinion on any topic from across the social web. | X | Video, Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, Forum, Download, Review | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | Demographics, Trends Detection, Geo-Location Analysis, Marketing Measurements, Competitor Analysis | Excel, .CSV, .JPG, .PNG | Pay | Web Accessible |
| 2610 | Tweepy | An easy-to-use Python library for accessing the Twitter API. | Python | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | Unknown | Free | Python 2.6 and 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 & 3.5 | |
| 2070 | Meltwater Social (Sysomos) | Offering a comprehensive set of solutions that support the full spectrum of your advanced social analytics and management needs. | X | Twitter, Blogger, Forum, Wikipedia, Video, Download | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery | Brand/Trend Analysis | Excel CSV, PDF and JPEGs. | Pay | Web Accessible |
| 1370 | Developer (Gnip) | Gnip is Twitter’s enterprise API platform, delivering real-time and historical social data to power your business. | X | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | Content Analysis | JSON, .CSV | Pay | Web Accessible | |
| 940 | Twitonomy | Browse, search, filter and get insights on the people you follow and those who follow you. | X | Data Collection + Analysis+ Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | ✓ | .CSV, .PDF | Free + Pay | Web Accessible | |
| 857 | TAGS | Google Sheet template which lets you setup and run automated collection of search results from Twitter | X | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | N/A | |
| 834 | Datasift | Analyze trends and topics from the world’s largest source of public opinion. | X | Bitly, Blogs, Boards, DailyMotion, Disqus, Facebook, IMBd, Intense Debate, LexisNexis, NewsCred, Reddit, Topix, Tumblr, Videos, Wikipedia, Wordpress, YouTube | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Text Analysis | Context Analysis, Sentiment Analysis | .CSV, JSON | Pay | Web Accessible |
| 708 | Issuecrawler | The IssueCrawler is web network location and visualization software. | X | Internet | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery | Co-link Analysis, Snowball Analysis, Inter-actor Analysis | .XML, Raw Data | Unknown | |
| 689 | Netlytic | Netlytic is a cloud-based text and social networks analyzer that can automatically summarize and discover social networks from online conversations on social media sites. | X | Twitter, YouTube, RSS Feed, or text/csv file | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | Geo-Location Analysis, Category (Topical) Analysis | .CSV,Pajek, .PNG, UCINET | Free + Pay | Web Accessible |
| 520 | Digmind | Social media analytics for businesses. | X | Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Blogger, Forum, Review | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery | Competitor Analysis Analysis, Trend Analysis, Real-time Analysis, Intelligence Crawlers | .PDF, .PPT, .XLS, .JPG | Pay | Web Accessible |
| 516 | Facepager | Facepager was designed for fetching public available data from Twitter and other JSON-based API. | X | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | .CSV | Free | Windows and Mac OS X | |
| 479 | Audiense | Utilise social data to understand the audiences that matter most.We empower organisations to intelligently engage individuals at an unprecedented scale | X | Facebook, Instagram, Twitter | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | Identify audience, gain insights (demographics, interests, online habits, purchase behaviour, media consumption, influencers) | .PDF, .PPT, .CSV, .XLS | Pay | N/A |
| 474 | DiscoverText | DiscoverText is a cloud-based, collaborative text analytics solution. With dozens of powerful text mining features, the DiscoverText software _x0003_solution provides tools to quickly and accurately make better decisions. | X | Twitter, Blogger, Disqus, Email | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Text Analysis | N/A | Unknown | Free + Pay | Web Accessible |
| 435 | Crowdtangle | CrowdTangle is the leading content discovery and social monitoring platform for publishers and brands. | X | Facebook, Instagram, Reddit | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text analysis | Real-time dashboards, custom notifications, big screen visualizations | N/A | Pay | Web Accessible |
| 402 | Webometric Analyst | Webometric Analyst analyses the web impact of documents or web sites and creates network diagrams of collections of web sites, as well as creating networks and time series analysis of social web sites (e.g., YouTube, Twitter) and some specialist web sites (e.g., Google Books, Mendeley). It automatically submits queries to search engines and other sites and process the results. | X | Twitter, Youtube, Flickr | Data Collection + Analysis | Network Discovery | N/A | Pajek | Free | Windows only |
| 317 | yourTwapperKeeper | Simple, easy way to archive data from Twitter directly on your server | X | Data Collection | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | N/A | HTML, RSS, EXCEL, and JSON | Free | Virtual server with an IP address running APACHE / PHP / MYSQL | |
| 283 | Python-twitter | A Python wrapper around the Twitter API. | Python | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | Unknown | Free | Python versions from 2.7+ and Python 3. | |
| 268 | Twython | Twython is the premier Python library providing an easy (and up-to-date) way to access Twitter data. | Python | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | Unknown | Free | Python 2.6+ and Python 3 | |
| 257 | Infoextractor | A framework to extract relevant information from various sources such as blogs, YouTube, and Twitter | X | Youtube, Wikipedia, BlogCatalog | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | .CVS, TEXT, .XML | Free | Web Accessible |
| 230 | Twitter Advanced Search* | Twitter Advanced search using key words, phrases and hashtags. | X | Data Search | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 222 | DMI-TCAT | DMI-TCAT allows one to retrieve and collect tweets from Twitter and to analyze them in various ways | X | Data collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | Reproducible data capture + analysis | .CSV, .GEXF | Free | Debian, Ubuntu | |
| 204 | Tweet Archivist | Tweet Archivist collects data directly from Twitter based on the user’s search terms. The user can also use this tool analyze the data to show information such as top users, words, URLs, hashtags, and more. Finally, users can download the dataset as either an Excel or PDF file. | X | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | N/A | .CSV, .PDF | Pay | Web Accessible | ||
| 189 | StreamR | This package provides a series of functions that allow R users to access Twitter's filter, sample, and user streams, and to parse the output into data frames. | R | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | .TXT | Free | Unknown | |
| 182 | Mozdeh | A free Windows program for keyword, time series, sentiment, gender and content analyses of tweets. | X | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | Demographic Analysis, Time-Series Analysis, Content Analysis, Trend Detection | .TXT | Free | Windows (Desktop advisable) | |
| 152 | OutWit Hub | OutWit Hub explores the depths of the Web for you, automatically collecting and organizing data and media from online sources. | X | Internet Sources | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | .CSV, .TXT, .HTML, Excel or SQL databases | Pay | Firefox |
| 150 | Social Feed Manager | Social Feed Manager is open source software for libraries, archives, cultural heritage institutions and research organizations. It empowers those communities’ researchers, faculty, students, and archivists to define and create collections of data from social media platforms. Social Feed Manager will harvest from Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and Sina Weibo and is extensible for other platforms. In addition to collecting data from those platforms’ APIs, it will collect linked web pages and media. | X | Twitter, Flickr, Sina Weibo | Data Collection | N/A | Can also collect related web resources. Supports multiple users. | .CSV, Excel, .JSON | Free (open source) | Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server |
| 139 | YouTube Data Tools | This is a collection of simple tools for extracting data from the YouTube platform via the YouTube API v3. | X | Youtube | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | .GDF, .TSV | Free | Web Accessible |
| 128 | Twurl | Twurl is like curl, but tailored specifically for the Twitter API. | RubyGems | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | Unknown | Free | Unknown | |
| 106 | Foller.me | Foller.me is a Twitter analytics application that gives you rich insights about any public Twitter profile. We gather near real-time data about topics, mentions, hashtags, followers, location and more! | X | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Text Analysis | Tweet Statistics | x | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 95 | Vtracker | The most complete tool for monitoring social networks | X | Data Collection + Analysis | Network Discovery | Monitoring (Brand/Competitor Analysis) | Unknown | Pay | Web Accessible | |
| 87 | Textexture | Textexture visualizes any text as a network and enables the user to use this interactive visualization to read through the text in a non-linear fashion. Using the network one can see the most relevant topics inside the text organized as distinctively colored clusters of nodes, their relationship to one another, and the most influential words inside the text, responsible for topic shifts. This way the user can navigate right into the topic of the text that is the most relevant to them and use the bigger (more influential) nodes to shift into another subject. | X | Youtube, Text | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | N/A | .GEFX | Free | Web Accessible |
| 86 | Twarc | twarc is a command line tool and Python library for archiving Twitter JSON data | Python | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | JSON | Free | Python 2 or 3 | |
| 79 | Nvivo/Ncapture | a place to organize, store and retrieve your data so you can work more efficiently, save time and rigorously back up findings with evidence | X | N/A | Data analysis + Visualization | Text analysis | N/A | .DOCX, .XLSL, .QDC | Pay | Windows, Mac |
| 76 | Chorus | Chorus is a free, evolving, data harvesting and visual analytics suite designed to facilitate and enable social science research using Twitter data. | X | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | N/A | Excel | Free | Windows only | |
| 71 | Visibrain Focus | Visibrain is a media monitoring tool for PR and communications professionals, used for reputation management, PR crisis prevention, and detecting influencers and trends. Visibrain’s unique techxlogy brings together online press, blogs and social media, capturing all online activity around a brand, in real time, xise free. | X | Data Collection + Analysis+ Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | Crisis Prevention and Management, Brand Analysis, Competitor Analysis | Unknown | Pay | Web Accessible | |
| 68 | Socioviz | SocioViz is a social media analytics platform powered by Social Network Analysis metrics. | X | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery | N/A | .GDF | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 66 | Twitter Audit* | A tool used to check how many of your Twitter followers are real. | X | Data Search | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 56 | Hosebird | A Java HTTP client for consuming Twitter's Streaming API | Java | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | x | Free | Unknown | |
| 54 | VOSON/Uberlink | VOSON is a web application built from the ground up for the collection and analysis of hyperlink network data. VOSON allows the user to perform web mining, text analysis, dataset manipulation and visualisation, and social network analysis (SNA) within an integrated environment. | X | Twitter, Reddit | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | Web Mining | .CSV,GraphML, Pajek | Free + Pay | Firefox, Chrome and Safari (including mobile Safari on the iPad) |
| 53 | Trendsmap | Twitter trending hashtags and topics from anywhere in the world; Analyse and visualise any topic, hashtag, word, user, or tweet in detail. | X | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text analysis | Interactive map, tweet selection controls, detailed stats, detailed account analytics | N/A | Pay | N/A | |
| 47 | Info Extractor | Extracts relevant information such as title, tags, comments and view count from various sources like blogs, YouTube, and Wikipedia in a format that is easily exported. | X | Youtube, Wikipedia, Blogger, Huffington Post | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | .CSV, Text, .XML | Free | Web Accessible |
| 46 | One Million Tweet Map* | Tweet map per locations up to 6 hours old, with a keyword search option. | X | Data Search + Analytics | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 43 | Twint* | An advanced Twitter scraping & OSINT tool written in Python that doesn't use Twitter's API, allowing you to scrape a user's followers, following, Tweets and more | Python | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 37 | Social Bearing* | Insights & analytics for tweets & timelines | X | Data Collection + Analysis | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 29 | Affinio | Affinio is the marketing intelligence platform that is changing the way you relate to your consumers. | X | Twitter, Pinterest | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery | Content Analysis, Competitor Analysis | .CSV | Pay | Web Accessible |
| 28 | Amnesty YouTube Dataviewer* | Extract Youtube Metadata- Reverse image (video still) search and exact uploading time. Here’s an Advanced Guide on Verifying Video Content. | X | Youtube | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible |
| 26 | Gravatar* | Your Gravatar is an image and public profile that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site? | X | Blogs | Data Search | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible |
| 26 | Telegram Analytics (tgstat) * | Search open Telegram messages | X | Telegram | Data Search | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible |
| 25 | iScience Maps | iScience Maps is a free Web service for scientists interested in using Twitter content in their research. This service allows one to assess the effects of specific events (e.g. a natural catastrophe or a political election) as they are voiced on Twitter. For example, make comparisons between cities, regions or countries for terms or combinations of terms and monitor their evolution in the course of an event. | X | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | N/A | Geo-Location Analysis | .CSV, .XLS | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 24 | Echosec | Helping Companies Identify Threats from Social Media And Darknet Data | X | N/A | Data collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | Access to raw content within search parameters, 24/7 monitoring / notifications, up to date visualization | N/A | Pay | N/A |
| 20 | InVID* | The InVID innovation action develops a knowledge verification platform to detect emerging stories and assess the reliability of newsworthy video files and content spread via social media. | X | Twitter, Instagram, Facebook | Data Search + Verification + Analysis | Network Discovery + Content Analysis | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible |
| 19 | Digitalfootprints | collect closed Facebook data with user consent; retrieve data from selected profiles, view stats and search for specific data / content, sort and filter content | X | Data Collection + Analysis | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 19 | Pulsar Social | Pulsar helps you find the story in the data by bringing all your digital audiences into one place and leveraging the power of AI and data visualization | X | Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram | Data collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Text Analysis | Longitudinal data, Unlimited channels, Native analytics, audience insights, content performance | N/A | Pay | N/A |
| 16 | Twecoll | Twitter command-line tool written in Python, can be used to retrieve data from Twitter and purge likes (its only data-altering feature) | Python | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Python 2.7+ | |
| 9 | Webometrics | program for altmetrics, citation analysis, social web analysis and webometrics, including link analysis | X | Youtube, Twitter, Flickr | Data Collection + Analysis | Network discovery + Text Analysis | N/A | N/A | Free | Windows |
| 8 | Facebook Video Downloader* | Download Facebook Videos Online | X | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 6 | TwitterGoggles | This project is built for the Twitter Search API version 1.1 | Python | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Python 3.3 | |
| 6 | TwitterGoogles | A Python 3.3 adaptation of the PHP program "Twitter Zombie", originally developed for the Twitter Search API version 1.0. | Python | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | JSON | Free | Python 3.3 | |
| 5 | Botometer (BotOrNot)* | Botometer (formerly BotOrNot) checks the activity of a Twitter account and gives it a score. Higher scores mean more bot-like activity. | X | Data Search | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 5 | Twlets* | The easiest way to download Twitter data. Get anyone's tweets, followers, likes, videos, and more into Excel. | X | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | Excel | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 4 | Instaloader* | Download pictures (or videos) along with their captions and other metadata from Instagram. | Python | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 4 | Naoyun | Naoyun helps to vizualize live twitter activity. Naoyun is a software that create a bridge between Twitter and Gephi with their own Stream API. | X | Data Collection + Analysis | Network Discovery | ✓ | Unknown | Free | ||
| 4 | Removeddit* | Display removed (by mods) and deleted (by users) comments/threads from Reddit. | X | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 4 | tStreamingArchiver | tStreamingArchiver is a set of programs for archiving Tweets using the Twitter API and moving them into a mySQL database. | Java | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | .TXT | Free | Unknown | |
| 4 | Who posted what?* | whopostedwhat.com is a non public Facebook keyword search for people who work in the public interest. | X | Data Search | Network Discovery | Access to raw content within search parameters | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 3 | Youtube Geo-Search Tool* | Location-based search on YouTube | X | Youtube | Data Search | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible |
| 2 | Communalytic* | Communalytic is a Research Tool For Studying Online Discourse.Communalytic can collect, analyze and visualize data from various social media platforms and can automatically identify toxic and anti-social interactions, map shared interests and detect signs of possible coordination among seemingly disparate actors in online discourse. | X | Reddit, Twitter, Instagram & Facebook (via CrowdTangle) | Data Collection + Analysis + Visualization | Network Discovery + Toxicity analysis | .CSV, .GraphML | Free + Pay | Web Accessible | |
| 2 | Search is Back* | Search is Back | X | Data Search | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 2 | T* | A command-line power tool for Twitter. | Ruby | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | .CSV | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 2 | Twitter Video Downloader* | Download twitter videos & GIF from tweets | X | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 2 | Youtube Geofind* | YouTube Geofind; three different search functions, location, topic, and channel. | X | Youtube | Data Search | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible |
| 2 | Youtube-dl* | youtube-dl is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites. | Python | Youtube | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible |
| 1 | New Fb Search* | Facebook Search Tool | X | Data Search | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 1 | Reddit Investigator* | Reddit Investigator works just by collecting the data that reddit makes available and elaborates it to obtain some new useful infos. | X | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 1 | Skopenow* | The quick and intelligent solution for open source and social media investigations. | X | Facebook, Twitter | Data Search | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Pay | Web Accessible |
| 1 | SteamID * | steamid.uk is a service where you can easily find steam profiles and information on this account. | X | Steam | Data Search | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible |
| 1 | Story Saver* | Download Instagram Stories, Highlights and Videos Online Easily with one simple click. | X | Data Collection | Network Discovery | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 1 | Treeverse* | Treeverse is a tool for visualizing and navigating Twitter conversation threads. | X | Data Visualization + Navigation | Text Analysis | N/A | N/A | Free | Web Accessible | |
| 1 | Twitter Stream Downloader | A simple Python script to download tweets from the Twitter streaming API. | Python | Twitter, LinkedIn | Data Collection | N/A | N/A | Unknown | Free | Tweepy |