'Catching the user' in online research: an innovative approach for respondent recruitment

Most APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are used in social science research to retrieve metadata on media objects, harvesting descriptive data (e.g. tags) and user interaction with the object (e.g. number of comments), or on media subjects (e.g. number of posts) as they enable instantaneous, automated and repeatable data collection. This paper elaborates on another use of APIs; namely as a tool for the recruitment of respondents from online platforms. We will present two case studies in which APIs were used to recruit respondents from YouTube and Twitter and to invite them to participate in an online survey. Using these case studies as a springboard, we will point to the methodological opportunities and challenges, and, importantly, to the ethical considerations related to using APIs for enlisting respondents, such as the blurred distinction between private and public spaces or between ‘being in public’ and ‘being public’