I have contributed to SAGE Research Methods: Doing Research Online with entries about data collection using APIs and how to make meme collections. I’m happy to see these entries out, it was a peer-reviewed process and also paid service. I was impressed by the work of the editors involved in this project, especially Martin Perchard. It is indeed challenging to make my technical work and knowledge about APIs accessible in plain language. I have learnt A LOT throughout this process. The entry on making meme collections is a piece written by three hands: Giulia Giorge, Richard Rogers and myself. See below the title, info, abstract and links of all entries.
Collecting Data Using APIs Part 1: How to Understand APIs and Navigating API Documentation
- By: Janna Joceli Omena
Edited by:Morgan Currie - Product: SAGE Research Methods: Doing Research Online
- Publication year: 2022
- Online pub date: July 12, 2022
- Discipline: Anthropology, Business and Management, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Communication and Media Studies, Counseling and Psychotherapy, Economics, Education, Geography, Health, History, Marketing, Nursing, Political Science and International Relations, Psychology, Social Policy and Public Policy, Social Work, Sociology
- Methods: Data mining, Social media research, Application programming interfaces
- DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529611441
- Keywords:documentation, Facebook, social media, software, Twitter, videos, YouTube
Application programming interfaces (APIs) are machine-readable interfaces that allow interactions between multiple software, facilitating data use, access, and exchange. Scholars use web APIs, albeit in a limited way, as research sources and objects of criticism. This two-part series of guides offer an overview of the knowledge needed to collect data using APIs. This overview helps researchers and scholars understand the attitude they will need to adapt to become conceptually, technically, and empirically acquainted with APIs and the tools needed to communicate with and request data from them. Following this overview of the technicity perspective, this guide explains and defines the main characteristics of APIs, and introduces different types of web APIs. This guide will also present different ways of understanding and navigating API documentation, including using data retrieval software and verifying outputs. In Part 2 of this series, the guide will demonstrate possible ways to communicate with and access APIs, highlighting the main requirements to do that. Finally, the guide highlights aspects to consider before, during, and after data collection. Collectively these guides will help readers gain a technical and methodological understanding of how to collect data using APIs while illustrating key ethical considerations that may arise in the process.
Collecting Data Using APIs Part 2: How to Communicate With and Access APIs
- By: Janna Joceli Omena
Edited by:Morgan Currie - Product: SAGE Research Methods: Doing Research Online
- Publication year: 2022
- Online pub date: July 12, 2022
- Discipline: Anthropology, Business and Management, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Communication and Media Studies, Counseling and Psychotherapy, Economics, Education, Geography, Health, History, Marketing, Nursing, Political Science and International Relations, Psychology, Social Policy and Public Policy, Social Work, Sociology
- Methods: Multiple-choice questions, Access, Application programming interfaces
- DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529611458
- Keywords:channels, climate, climate change, deforestation, id, parameters, religion, software, videos, YouTube
This guide is the second in a two-part series, which offers an overview of the knowledge needed to collect data using APIs. Part 1 provided an introduction to the main characteristics of APIs, different types of Web APIs, and presented different ways of understanding and navigating API documentation, including using data retrieval software and verifying outputs. This second guide will demonstrate possible ways to communicate with and access APIs, highlighting the main requirements to do that. Subsequently, it will highlight aspects to consider before, during, and after data collection. Collectively these guides will help readers gain a technical and methodological understanding of how to collect data using APIs while illustrating key ethical considerations that may arise in the process.
- By: Giulia Giorgi, Richard Rogers & Janna Joceli Omena
- Product: SAGE Research Methods: Doing Research Online
- Publication year: 2022
- Online pub date: July 12, 2022
- Discipline: Anthropology, Business and Management, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Communication and Media Studies, Counseling and Psychotherapy, Economics, Education, Geography, Health, History, Marketing, Nursing, Political Science and International Relations, Psychology, Social Policy and Public Policy, Social Work, Sociology
- Methods: Big data, Social media research, Computer vision
- DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529611267
- Keywords:Facebook, Google, memes, screening, screens, search engines, social media, software, summer schools, Twitter
Given their prevalence in a contemporary digital society, memes hardly need an introduction. They pervade playful social media and are also produced and shared in abundance around elections, protests, and social movements. Much of the scholarship surrounding memes takes as its point of departure that they are collections of artefacts, rather than single pieces. Practically speaking, their study thus relies on making meme collections. In the following, we show how to make meme collections by querying and extracting memes from four key sites: the meme database Know Your Meme, the web search engine Google Images, the meme host and generator Imgur, and the Facebook marketing dashboard CrowdTangle. Thereafter, we unpack these collections using two software applications and methodologies (image similarity grouping and computer vision) in order to make the point that each site shapes the kind of collection that is made. More starkly put, each site or online environment affects the conceptualisation as well as the composition of the meme collection gathered in that the formats and sources vary per platform.
I, however, still don´t understand why institutions or people deliberately change one’s name without considering the information received. In the printed version of these entries, rather than Janna Joceli Omena, one will find Janna J. Omena. On other occasions, my name is usually changed to Janna Omena, again it happens after I provide information about my work (short bio and photo) and my name (Janna Joceli Omena). Also, the citation model adopted in the entries as a single author includes the editor name beside the author in the beginning, which isn’t a familiar practice to me and neither was used in the coauthored entry. These are examples of “academic practices” that still make no sense to me, and I hope I’ll not get use to it…
Janna Joceli Omena 
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