Twitter and Serendipity: 
The birth of the VIRAL Database
Dr. Kristof Jacobs
IMR, Political Science
Dr. Niels Spierings
Department of Sociology
Content
1. How it started
2. Collecting and organizing data
3. Sharing the data
1. How it all started
It all started at a mini-conference…
“Does Twitter win you votes?”
2. Collecting & Organizing data
• 2010: Euhm…
• 2012: Automated data collection… 
2. Collecting & Organizing data
• Practical problems: 
- Yes, but who?
- They don’t speak the same language
- Twitter versus Facebook
• Legal problems? 
- Course advise (Google, Uber,…): 
- ‘Don’t be a nuisance’ ; 
- When they complain remove them
2. Collecting & Organizing data
3. Sharing data: why do we share?
1. The contextual reason 
The Lacour scandal & DA-RT
2. The conceptual reason 
Big Data => By definition “messy” 
=>The Wikipedia model (joint updating) versus “Perfect Replication”!! 
(e.g. Piketty)
3. Sharing data: why share?
3. The principled reason 
We take data & enrich the raw data, 
We should make them available… 
So others can further refine & enrich them
4. The self-interested reason 
By sharing the data, we plant the flag 
(recognition in a crowded field)
www.ru.nl/viral 
Oh, it turns out that Twitter wins you votes, just not that many…