———- Forwarded message ———
From: Tess McNulty <tess.mcnulty2@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Subject: [DHSI] SMILE tool for code free YouTube and Reddit API data
scraping
To: <Institute@lists.uvic.ca>

Dear Fellow Digital Humanists,

I’m writing to share a tool that may be of use in both research and
teaching contexts.

The tool, which is called the SMILE (or Social Media Macroscope)
(https://smile.smm.ncsa.illinois.edu/) app, is a code free, GUI
wrapper/application for collecting social media data from both the YouTube
and reddit APIs, as well as for engaging in some basic analytics of that
data.

This tool should be useful for humanists, digital or otherwise, who want to
do work on these platforms, in part because, in addition to bypassing the
need to interact with the APIs programmatically, it encodes some
operations—like, for example, a “random sample” YouTube function—that are
not intuitive in the original API documentation (the reddit access, it is
also worth adding, is also now more unique).

But the tool may also be useful, I hope—and perhaps particularly—in the
classroom: If you are like me, then you may once, in the past, have used
the (now no longer free) Twitter API for in class exercises regarding
social media web-scraping. The SMILE tool is a nice replacement for that in
lesson plans, allowing students to collect YouTube and reddit API data
without needing to write the code.

I recently worked together with Chen Wang of the University of Illinois’
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) to update this tool
for YouTube functionality. Past versions of the app were developed by Wang
and collaborators, and please use the citation provided in app (as well as
beneath my signature, in this email) if you use the tool to collect or
analyze data for publication.

Access is available on the sign in page
(https://smile.smm.ncsa.illinois.edu/)with an ORCID id or through your
university, and questions can be referred to myself or to
smm@lists.illinois.edu. If you do use the tool, it would be appreciated,
though not necessary, to fill out a very brief user form here:

https://forms.illinois.edu/sec/132147707

Thanks and all best,

Tess McNulty

Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities

English Department

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Wang, C., Kim, Y. W., Kooper, R., & Yun, J. (2023, October 30). SMILE: A
User-Friendly Science Gatewayfor Social Media Research and Collaboration.
Science Gateways 2023 (SG23), Pittsburgh, PA.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10028454

Wang, C., Marini, L., Chin, C. L., Vance, N., Donelson, C., Meunier, P., &
Yun, J. T.(2019, September). Social Media Intelligence and Learning
Environment: an Open Source Framework for Social Media Data Collection,
Analysis and Curation. In 2019 15th International Conference on eScience
(eScience) (pp. 252-261). IEEE.

Yun, J. T., Vance, N., Wang, C., Marini, L., Troy, J., Donelson, C., Chin,
C. L., Henderson, M. D. (2019).The Social Media Macroscope: A science
gateway for research using social media data. Future Generation Computer
Systems. doi:10.1016/j.future.2019.10.029

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Tess McNulty <tess.mcnulty2@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Subject: [DHSI] SMILE tool for code free YouTube and Reddit API data
scraping
To: <Institute@lists.uvic.ca>

Dear Fellow Digital Humanists,

I’m writing to share a tool that may be of use in both research and
teaching contexts.

The tool, which is called the SMILE (or Social Media Macroscope)
(https://smile.smm.ncsa.illinois.edu/) app, is a code free, GUI
wrapper/application for collecting social media data from both the YouTube
and reddit APIs, as well as for engaging in some basic analytics of that
data.

This tool should be useful for humanists, digital or otherwise, who want to
do work on these platforms, in part because, in addition to bypassing the
need to interact with the APIs programmatically, it encodes some
operations—like, for example, a “random sample” YouTube function—that are
not intuitive in the original API documentation (the reddit access, it is
also worth adding, is also now more unique).

But the tool may also be useful, I hope—and perhaps particularly—in the
classroom: If you are like me, then you may once, in the past, have used
the (now no longer free) Twitter API for in class exercises regarding
social media web-scraping. The SMILE tool is a nice replacement for that in
lesson plans, allowing students to collect YouTube and reddit API data
without needing to write the code.

I recently worked together with Chen Wang of the University of Illinois’
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) to update this tool
for YouTube functionality. Past versions of the app were developed by Wang
and collaborators, and please use the citation provided in app (as well as
beneath my signature, in this email) if you use the tool to collect or
analyze data for publication.

Access is available on the sign in page
(https://smile.smm.ncsa.illinois.edu/)with an ORCID id or through your
university, and questions can be referred to myself or to
smm@lists.illinois.edu. If you do use the tool, it would be appreciated,
though not necessary, to fill out a very brief user form here:

https://forms.illinois.edu/sec/132147707

Thanks and all best,

Tess McNulty

Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities

English Department

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Wang, C., Kim, Y. W., Kooper, R., & Yun, J. (2023, October 30). SMILE: A
User-Friendly Science Gatewayfor Social Media Research and Collaboration.
Science Gateways 2023 (SG23), Pittsburgh, PA.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10028454

Wang, C., Marini, L., Chin, C. L., Vance, N., Donelson, C., Meunier, P., &
Yun, J. T.(2019, September). Social Media Intelligence and Learning
Environment: an Open Source Framework for Social Media Data Collection,
Analysis and Curation. In 2019 15th International Conference on eScience
(eScience) (pp. 252-261). IEEE.

Yun, J. T., Vance, N., Wang, C., Marini, L., Troy, J., Donelson, C., Chin,
C. L., Henderson, M. D. (2019).The Social Media Macroscope: A science
gateway for research using social media data. Future Generation Computer
Systems. doi:10.1016/j.future.2019.10.029