Twitter on Tuesday announced a significant shift in the type of data it makes available for free to third-party academic researchers interested in studying user behaviors and trends related to online discourse. Now, Twitter says it will no longer require researchers pay for premium or enterprise developer access and will instead make the “full history of public conversation” — what the company refers to as its full-archive search endpoint — available to any researcher or developer who applies as part of the launch of a new academic research track.
The change is part of the company’s ongoing efforts to improve the Twitter API, the set of tools it makes available for those outside the company to build something on top of Twitter or use…