Since it was bought by Elon Musk, the platform formerly known as Twitter has changed significantly. It has seen a dramatic drop of active users and regulations on hate speech and false information were significantly loosened. The platforms’ users have thus become a lot more radical and much more false information is spread. That does not make it useless for online investigation it is just important, that you are aware of what you are dealing with. You can still use the platforms search function, look for users, pictures and hashtags even tough some features have been limited for those who do not have an X-subscription.
How to use X’s Search Function as a Journalist
Finding information on X gets a lot easier as soon as you learn how to use the platform’s advanced search function. It allows you to filter for specific locations and to look for Posts that include or exclude specific phrases. You can also specify dates, the least number of interactions and whether or not a tweet includes a link.
Additionally, you can use key operators in the advanced search interface to further specify your findings. Interhactives.com provides a more detailed guide that explains Twitters advanced search function but is still applicable for X.
If you want an even more detailed instruction, check out this tutorial by maketecheasier.
When you are utilizing the platforms search functions it is important to be aware of the settings and adjust them according to your needs. When using the standard explore search function, be aware that its’ default modus is personalized by an algorithm and favors posts that are close to your location. If these settings don’t serve the goal of your search, make sure to disable them, by clicking on gearwheel next to the search field and de-selecting the blue checkboxes.
If you are using the advanced search function there are other default settings that you can disable, depending on the results you are looking for. You can disable a filter that hides content that the algorithm deems sensitive and if you have blocked or muted any accounts you can choose whether you want contend that was posted by them to be included in your search. Again, you can access these settings by clicking on the gearwheel next to the beach field in the advanced search modus.
Hoaxy:
Hoaxy is a powerful online tool that enables you to search and visualize the spread of news-claims and fact checking activities on X. It was initially designed for Twitter but has beed adjusted to search X as well. It illustrates two aspects of the spread of online information: trends over time and the networks through which the information is spread and shared. Hoaxy combs through activities on Y of the last seven days. Thus, it is more a tool suitable for fast reporting and not for researching online-development in the past. There used to also be an archive search tool, but it will be discontinued in 2022.
Hoaxy results for the last few hours of news claims circulation on Twitter, dealing with the January 6 hearings in the USA.
Each little dot in the graphic represents a X account that has posted something in relation to your keyword. The different colors indicate how likely it is that an account is not an actual person, but a bot. You can click directly on the dots in the graphic and Hoaxy will transfer you to the C profile. You can also export the raw csv-data, post the animated graph on X or embed it in your website.
Use Geocoding to find Eyewitnesses on X
You can use the search bar to type in the GPS-coordinates of addresses and locations to find Tweets that were tagged with a specific location. This is especially helpful, if you are reporting on a specific event looking for eyewitnesses, pictures or videos of the incident.
How to find Posts from a specific Location
- Use latlong.net to find out the GPS-coordinates of the exact location you are looking for. Use as complete an address as possible, otherwise the website will think you are a bot. If you are still blocked, simply reload the website and try again.
- Type the latitude and longitude results it into the search bar as follows:
geogoce: latitude, longitude, radius
The radius specifies how far away (in kilometers) a tweet can be from your specified location in order to be still included in the search results.
- You can combine the search for a specific location with keywords and operators to refine your search results.
How to extract Information about X-Accounts
Before you start to investigate X-accounts you should make yourself familiar with the information on a Twitter profile. Because, those are hints you can use to find out more about a user. An X profile consists of the following tokens of information:
- Displayname: Not unique, can contain special symbols and emojis
- Username: Unique, can contain letters, numbers and underscores but no emojis
- Location: Where users locate themselves
- Date of joining: Month and year the account was created in
- A X-profile also displays the number of followers, followings and possible links that a user might have added to their account.
- Since changing to X some of the platforms users have different colored checks next to their user name, indicating whether the have subscribed to X or an are verified accounts from government organizations. Clicking on the checks will explain to you, what the check is indicating in the case of the respective account.
In our text on how to investigate Tiktok, we described in detail how the username, the bio-info and the profile picture can be utilized to find out more about a user. The same principles apply to X profiles. You just have to adapt the URL that you use for your search enquiries accordingly. If you want to learn more about that, head over to our Tik Tok chapter.
More Sources on OSINT for X:
This guide by authentic8 provides a more detailed overview of the possibilities to extract information from X. Unfortunately the switch from Twitter to X lead to the loss of quite a view useful OSINT-tools for the platform since they have not been updated since or do not work any longer with the platform’s API.