4TCT, A 4chan Text Collection Tool

TL;DR

The paper introduces 4TCT, a Python-based tool that uses the 4chan API to collect data from various boards, aiding researchers in studying the site's content and social dynamics.

Contribution

It presents a new, open-source data collection tool for 4chan, facilitating sociological and behavioral research on the platform.

Findings

Tool successfully collects data from multiple 4chan boards.

Enables analysis of hateful and political content on 4chan.

Supports sociological research and digital behavior studies.

Abstract

4chan is a popular online imageboard which has been widely studied due to an observed concentration of far-right, antisemitic, racist, misogynistic, and otherwise hateful material being posted to the site, as well as the emergence of political movements and the evolution of memes which are posted there, discussed in Section 1.1. We have created a tool developed in Python which utilises the 4chan API to collect data from a selection of boards. This paper accompanies the release of the code via the github repository: https://github.com/jhculb/4TCT. We believe this tool will be of use to academics studying 4chan by providing a tool for collection of data from 4chan to sociological researchers, and potentially contributing to GESIS' Digital Behavioural Data project.