Twitter #DataGrants selections

In February, we introduced the Twitter #DataGrants pilot program, with the goal of giving a handful of research institutions access to Twitter’s public and historical data. We are thrilled with the response from the research community — we received more than 1,300 proposals from more than 60 different countries, with more than half of the proposals coming from outside the U.S.

After reviewing all of the proposals, we’ve selected six institutions, spanning four continents, to receive free datasets in order to move forward with their research.

• Harvard Medical School / Boston Children’s Hospital (US): Foodborne Gastrointestinal Illness Surveillance using Twitter Data
• NICT (Japan): Disaster Information Analysis System
• University of Twente (Netherlands): The Diffusion And Effectiveness of Cancer Early Detection Campaigns on Twitter
• UCSD (US): Do happy people take happy images? Measuring happiness of cities
• University of Wollongong (Australia): Using GeoSocial Intelligence to Model Urban Flooding in Jakarta, Indonesia
• University of East London (UK): Exploring the relationship between Tweets and Sports Team Performance

Thank you to everyone who took part in this pilot. As we welcome Gnip to Twitter, we look forward to expanding the Twitter #DataGrants program and helping even more institutions and academics access Twitter data in the future. Finally, we’d also like to thank Mark Gillis, Chris Aniszczyk and Jeff Sarnat for their passion in helping create this program.