ISTI-TALK: Addressing Data Constraints in Social Media Research

Day - Time: 18 February 2026, h.11:00

Place: Area della Ricerca CNR di Pisa - Room: C-29

Speakers

• Andrea Failla

Referent

Giulio Del Corso

Abstract

Access to high-quality social media data is becoming increasingly restricted, posing significant challenges for computational social science. This talk outlines the current landscape of social media data access and its limitations, and then presents three complementary strategies to address them. We first examine how emerging open platforms with transparent APIs can partially restore empirical visibility, enabling large-scale analyses of online behavior in real-world settings. We then move beyond observational data to LLM-driven simulations, where populations of language-model agents interact over realistic network structures to study opinion dynamics under controlled conditions. Finally, we discuss the progression toward social media digital twins (i.e., integrated simulation environments combining agent behavior, natural language interaction, and algorithmic curation), which enable systematic in vitro experimentation on social dynamics and platform policies, complementing data-driven research.