Preserving the Ephemeral: Instagram Story Archiving with the Tidal Tales Plugin

TL;DR

The paper presents the Tidal Tales Plugin, a Firefox extension that automates the collection and archiving of Instagram stories, enabling long-term social media research while maintaining user account safety.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Firefox extension that efficiently archives ephemeral Instagram stories, addressing data collection challenges in social media research.

Findings

Enables automated collection of Instagram story metadata and media.

Supports long-term social media studies with enhanced data access.

Maintains account safety during data collection.

Abstract

We introduce the Tidal Tales Plugin, a Firefox extension for efficiently collecting and archiving of Instagram stories, addressing the challenges of ephemeral data in social media research. It enables an automated collection of story metadata and media files without risking account bans. It contributes to Web Science by facilitating expansive, long-term studies with enhanced data access and integrity.