Getting Started with CrowdTangle - strohne/Facepager GitHub Wiki

This Getting Started provides an introduction for fetching data from CrowdTangle with Facepager. It describes, how to fetch posts from a list of pages of German National Media. Therefore, you have to go to CrowdTangle first and prepare the data you want to fetch. Afterwards you can collect the respective data with Facepager.

Note: Access to the CrowdTangle API is restricted. To collect data from CrowdTangle, you have to apply to CrowdTangle at first.

To collect data from CrowdTangle, there are three different options : 1) fetch posts by ID, 2) fetch lists or searches from your dashboard or 3) search CrowdTangle using keywords or URLs.

To get the posts from several pages, you can go to https://apps.crowdtangle.com/ and create your own list. Click on + Create List and add all the pages you want to collect posts from. Also, CrowdTangle provides assembled lists, which are managed and maintained by them. This tutorial uses the German National Media-list from CrowdTangle. You can find this list in the left side of your dashboard - in the dropdown menu of “Lists” under “Pages”.

Once you compiled the data you want to fetch in CrowdTangle, you can switch to Facepager and start the data collection.

1. Create a database: Click New Database in the Menu Bar.

2. Add nodes: To fetch the posts from your list, you need to add the identifier of the list as a seed node in Facepager, by clicking Add Nodesin the menu bar. To get the ID of the list, go to your CrowdTangle dashboard and click on the list you want to query. Now, have a look at the URL: The list-ID is the last part of the URL after the slash. Hence, to fetch the posts from the German National Media-List, you have to add the Number “40412” as a node in Facepager.

3. Setup query: To fetch the posts from your node(s), you can make all the necessary adaptions in Facepager’s Query Setup. For a quick start, you can also load a preset with the predefined settings. Therefore, click on Presets in the menu bar. To get the posts from a list, load the CrowdTangle-Preset “3. Get posts from list” by clicking on Apply. Once the preset is applied, your settings should look like this:

Note: See the documentation for this endpoint for further details about possible parameters.

4. Authorize with access token: Before you can fetch the data, you have to make sure that your request is authorized. Otherwise, you won’t be able to get any results. The authorization settings should be loaded with the preset. Anyways, make sure that param is selected at the “Authorization” drop-down menu and that token is entered as “Name”. With these settings, an access token parameter containing your token will be added to the query. Now you can copy your personal CrowdTangle access token into the “Access token” field. You find your access token, when you are logged in at https://www.crowdtangle.com/. Go to “API Access” in the settings and copy your token from there. Since your access token acts like a password, the individual characters in Facepager are displayed through dots. Your authorization line should look like this:

5. Fetch data: Select your added node(s) in the Nodes View and click Fetch data. Look at the Status Log (make sure "Log all requests" was enabled) to see how the URL is assembled from your settings.

6. Inspect data: Expand your node or click ‘Expand nodes’ in the Menu Bar to open all nodes. Select one of the new child nodes. You should see, that each child node is a single post from your list. The raw data is shown in the Data View to the right.

7. Setup columns: The columns you can see in the Nodes View are defined by the preset you applied. You can change these columns in the Columns Setup. Click Clear Column Setup below the "Custom Table Columns" area. Change the columns according to your needs by adding keys found in the raw data into the "Custom Table Columns" area. You can use Add Column after you clicked on the specific key or just use Add All Columns for all keys. Don't forget to click Apply Column Setup to add your defined columns in the Nodes View. If the columns don't show up, make sure to scroll right or to resize the columns (click between the headers).

8. If needed, fetch subordinate objects (otherwise continue with the next step): With the collected posts, you can now continue to fetch further data, e. g. detailed information about the posts. Therefore, you can use another preset, “4. Get detail data about posts”. You can fetch subordinate objects very fast and simple: You only have to adapt the Node level. Using fetched data from earlier queries requires a higher Node level, make sure to put the Node level one level higher. Then, the query will be applied to all the nodes on this level.

9. Export data: Click Export Data to get a CSV file. Notice the options in the export mode field of the export dialog. You can open CSV files with Excel or any statistics software you like.

What is next?

• Learn about Facepager’s Basic Concepts and get familiar with the General Settings.
• Try out other default presets. There you find examples about how to get list IDs from your CrowdTangle Dashboard or how to get posts containing a special keyword or link.
• Get familiar with the CrowdTangle API by reading the section in this wiki and the Wiki of CrowdTangle.