Social Signals ⁽¹⁰⁾

It starts with a name. Or maybe just a handle - like “mooncat85.” No real name, no photo. Just that. You type it into a search box and hit enter. And then it happens: a Reddit profile, an old blog comment, maybe an Etsy shop…

There’s a certain thrill the first time you scrape a live social media feed. It feels like magic. Suddenly you’re not just seeing the posts - you’re pulling them, filtering them, slicing them into timelines, maps, or datasets. It’s the digital equivalent of listening through…

You’re scrolling. You spot something. A comment that’s about to disappear, a suspicious ad, a deleted tweet that was quoted but not archived. You want to keep it - not just save it, but preserve it in context, maybe add a note or mark it…

We live in a web that rewrites itself. Posts disappear, captions change, URLs rot. One day a site says one thing, the next day it says nothing at all. For researchers trying to document social behavior - whether you're studying misinformation, activism, brand identity, or…

When something happens - really happens - it shows up on social media first. Before it hits the news, before the official statements, before the cleanup crews or the PR teams, someone’s already posted a video, dropped a live thread, or snapped a blurry photo…