Revisiting Social Media Tie Strength in the Era of Data Access Restrictions

Abstract

The strength of social ties has an impact on how information is transferred and processed in a social network. Many studies have used social media data to evaluate tie strength. However, many of these studies were done at a time when social media data could be accessed legally without using the social media platform API. In the past few years, there have been significant changes in the data access policies of these platforms, which has led to a considerable reduction in the possibilities of using social media data for tie strength evaluation. The paper aims to study the impact of the data access policy changes of major social media platforms on the existing social media based tie strength models. The findings of this study show that the existing social media based tie strength models can no longer be utilized in their current form. Our study suggests that there is either a need to modify the existing social media based tie strength models or to develop new social media based tie strength models that reflect the recent changes in the data access policies.