Conclusion

315

appears. However, moving beyond counts of phenomena to more valuable
measures, such as ratios (i.e., measuring the denominator in addition to the
numerator), exposure, and longitudinal trends, requires time- and cost-
intensive data-gathering strategies. These are often hampered by the
platform’s own terms of service, to say nothing of policies that remove the
activities of malicious actors (such as foreign inﬂuence campaigns) or whole
classes of data (such as exposure or recommendation) from outside access.2 The
most inﬂuential analyses of Facebook data, by contrast, have largely been
written by Facebook researchers themselves or by academics working through
special arrangements with Facebook, often requiring prepublication approval
from the company.
Social_Media_and_Democracy