Scraping Facebook groups

Facebook groups provide a rich dataset of discussions. This script seeks to scrape these into a simple CSV for further analysis.

Prerequisites

This script assumes that you have a Facebook account and that you've linked it to a Facebook For Developers account. Click here to log into your developer account. You will need to use this developer account to get a user token capable of accessing user_managed_groups. You will also need your group's ID number, which can be found in its URL.

Data dictionary

This script outputs a CSV with seven columns:

• from_id: The user ID of the individual who made the post or comment
• from_name: The full name of the individual who made the post or comment
• id: The ID of the post or the post in response to which the comment was made
• message: The text of the post or comment
• link: The link (if any) associated with the post; comments do not have links associated with them and will always read NA
• created_time: The time at which the post or comment was submitted
• likes_count: The number of likes received by the post or comment
• is_comment: TRUE if the entry is a comment, FALSE if it is a post

Built With

Rfacebook - Easy R interface for Facebook

Authors

• Nathaniel Hendrix - My Website

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details