Importing Social Network Comments

Video Tutorial: Importing social network comment. Social networks provide a powerful reflection of the structure and dynamics of the modern society. Often it is not a single tweet or post that is interesting, but the reactions and interactions of the social network users. There are many applications for analysing user comments such as: social movements, brand communities, marketing campaigns, political discourse, discourses on currently relevant topics within a given community or society, understanding your audience, or even shit-storms.

ATLAS.ti imports Excel files generated by exportcomments.com. You can use the service for free to export up to 100 comments per link. For a small fee, you can use the service for three days to download the data you need. This also allows you to export nested comments.

Supported social networks are:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • TikTok
  • VK
  • Twitch
  • Discord

Look for a post on social networks whose comments you want to analyse. Copy the URL.

Go to exportcomments.com, enter the URL and download the comments.

Go to ATLAS.ti and select the Import & Export tab and from there the Social Network Comments button.

Social Network Comments

Select the Excel file you exported from exportcomments.com and click Open.

ATLAS.ti codes all users automatically and creates categories for each social network. All automatically generated codes are grouped into a code group (Codes from social media comment import).

Social Network Comments - auto codes

This is how the document after import could look like. The title and a screenshot of the video that is being discussed have been added to the document:

Social Network Comments - Example

A possible next step is to run a sentiment analysis:

Social Network Comments - Example