SMART-Portal: A data tracking tool for research purposes from social media and news websites

Abstract

Social media data has become an important source of information for different parties including researchers from various research fields. Rarely is information given regarding the methods used to acquire social media data to a satisfying degree that would allow the reproduction of research methods and results. With the goal of providing researchers with a method to collect social media data as easily as possible, this paper describes the development of a scientific tool to acquire such data and to use as a method to conduct future research which can be referenced in their work. This tool is named SMART-Portal and it provides researchers with the ability to track data online. Furthermore, it allows the exportation of data in multiple formats for different analyses in addition to allowing researchers to track data from different predefined news websites and Twitter.