This dataset documents public interest interventions applied by Twitter to the accounts of politicians and candidates during the 2020 US General Elections. Produced by the NYU Social Media and Political Participation (SMAPP) lab, the collection captures specific content moderation actions taken during the peak of the election cycle. It provides a record of platform-level enforcement against high-profile political figures during a critical democratic event.
Use Cases
- Analyzing the frequency of content moderation labels applied to specific political candidates
- Studying the timing of public interest interventions relative to 2020 election milestones
- Comparing moderation actions across different political parties or candidate levels
Strengths
- Produced by SMAPPNYU, a specialized academic research lab for political social media data
- Focuses specifically on the 2020 US General Election cycle
- Captures platform-level moderation actions that are often ephemeral or deleted
Limitations
- Unknown record count and missing column definitions
- Temporal scope is limited to the 2020 election window
- Geographic bias toward the United States political landscape
Provenance
- Source
- SMAPPNYU (NYU Social Media and Political Participation Lab)
- Collection Method
- Monitoring and collection of Twitter API data for political accounts
- Time Range
- 2020 US General Election cycle
- Freshness
- Last updated in July 2021; covers the 2020 election cycle and is not being updated for current events.
- Geography
- United States