BACKGROUND Scholars have data from in-person interviews, administrative data, and surveys for sexual violence research. Using Twitter as a data source for examining the nature of sexual violence is a relatively new and under-explored area of study. OBJECTIVE This study aims to provide a scoping review of the current literature on using Twitter data for researching sexual violence, elaborate on the validity of the methods, and discuss the implications and limitations of existing studies. METHODS We performed a literature search in six databases: APA PsycInfo (Ovid), Scopus, PubMed, International Bibliography of Social Sciences (ProQuest), Criminal Justice Abstracts (EBSCO), and Communications Abstracts (EBSCO) in April 2022. The initial search identified 3,759 articles that were imported into Covidence. Six independent reviewers screened these articles following two steps: (1) titles and abstracts and (2) full-text screening. The inclusion criteria were (1) empirical research, (2) focusing on sexual violence, (3) analyzing Twitter data (i.e., tweets and/or Twitter metadata), and (4) writing in English. Finally, six authors selected 121 articles that met the inclusion criteria and coded these articles. RESULTS We coded and presented the 121 articles using Twitter-based data for sexual violence research. About 70% of the articles were published in peer-reviewed journals after 2018. The reviewed articles collectively analyzed about 79.6 million Tweets. The primary approach to using Twitter as a data source was content text analysis (n=112, 92.5%) and sentiments (n=31, 25.6%). Hashtags (n=77, 83.7%) were the most prominent metadata features, followed by the time and date of the tweet, retweets, replies, URLs, and geotags. More than half of the articles (n=51, 38.3%) used the application programming interface to collect Twitter data. Data analyses included qualitative thematic analysis, machine learning (e.g., sentiment analysis, supervised machine learning, unsupervised machine learning, social network analysis), and quantitative analysis. Only ten percent of the studies discussed ethical considerations in their articles. CONCLUSIONS We describe the current state of using Twitter data for sexual violence research, develop a new taxonomy describing Twitter as a data source and evaluate the methodologies. Research recommendations include the following: the development of methods for data collection and analysis, in-depth discussions about ethical norms, specific aspects of sexual violence on Twitter, examinations of tweets in multiple languages, and generalizability of Twitter data. The current review demonstrates the potential of using Twitter data in sexual violence research.

Background Scholars have used data from in-person interviews, administrative systems, and surveys for sexual violence research. Using Twitter as a data source for examining the nature of sexual violence is a relatively new and underexplored area of study. Objective We aimed to perform a scoping review of the current literature on using Twitter data for researching sexual violence, elaborate on the validity of the methods, and discuss the implications and limitations of existing studies. Methods We performed a literature search in the following 6 databases: APA PsycInfo (Ovid), Scopus, PubMed, International Bibliography of Social Sciences (ProQuest), Criminal Justice Abstracts (EBSCO), and Communications Abstracts (EBSCO), in April 2022. The initial search identified 3759 articles that were imported into Covidence. Seven independent reviewers screened these articles following 2 steps: (1) title and abstract screening, and (2) full-text screening. The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) empirical research, (2) focus on sexual violence, (3) analysis of Twitter data (ie, tweets or Twitter metadata), and (4) text in English. Finally, we selected 121 articles that met the inclusion criteria and coded these articles. Results We coded and presented the 121 articles using Twitter-based data for sexual violence research. About 70% (89/121, 73.6%) of the articles were published in peer-reviewed journals after 2018. The reviewed articles collectively analyzed about 79.6 million tweets. The primary approaches to using Twitter as a data source were content text analysis (112/121, 92.5%) and sentiment analysis (31/121, 25.6%). Hashtags (103/121, 85.1%) were the most prominent metadata feature, followed by tweet time and date, retweets, replies, URLs, and geotags. More than a third of the articles (51/121, 42.1%) used the application programming interface to collect Twitter data. Data analyses included qualitative thematic analysis, machine learning (eg, sentiment analysis, supervised machine learning, unsupervised machine learning, and social network analysis), and quantitative analysis. Only 10.7% (13/121) of the studies discussed ethical considerations. Conclusions We described the current state of using Twitter data for sexual violence research, developed a new taxonomy describing Twitter as a data source, and evaluated the methodologies. Research recommendations include the following: development of methods for data collection and analysis, in-depth discussions about ethical norms, exploration of specific aspects of sexual violence on Twitter, examination of tweets in multiple languages, and decontextualization of Twitter data. This review demonstrates the potential of using Twitter data in sexual violence research.