Elections DATA ACCESS SERVICES Toolkit
1
why monitor
social media
Effects of Manipulation Manipulation Around the Clock How Manipulators Work What Research Can be Done
2
getting started in
your own context
3
build your own
methodology
4
how you can
access data
5
Tools and
Techniques
6
make an
impact

WhatsApp

How can you access data?

There is no official means of accessing data on WhatsApp. However, it's possible to access publicly available links and announce yourself as a social science researcher.

  • Search online popular WhatsApp groups in your country (chat groups and media articles)
  • Join the group and announce yourself as a researcher planning on analyzing the posts for social science purposes
  • Save the chat history
  • Anonymize all names and phone numbers in your data

Helpful resources

  • Beginner's Guide to Processing WhatsApp data with Python by Bobby Muljono
  • Starting in 2018, WhatsApp funded a number of projects to analyze misinformation on its platform globally. All projects used their own data, not provided by WhatsApp. Here, you can find a list of these studies, which might be helpful examples.

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