Uploaded September 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
In this How To... episode, Bellingcat's Data Scientist Tristan Lee introduces you to the Bellingcat VK-url scraper tool. This tool allows you to scrape data, including videos and photos, from the Russian social media website 'VKontakte'. This way you can analyse and archive the content for your research.
Find the tool here: colab.research.google.com/github/bellingcat/open-source-research-notebooks/blob/main/notebooks/bellingcat/vk-url-scraper.ipynb
You can use this tool in Google Colab Notebooks, we previously made a video about how to use Notebooks here: youtube.com/watch?v=ymCMy8OffHM
You can join our discord server on this link: discord.com/invite/ehN58Pbh?event=1276551046591938610
And you can find all of our open-source research tools on our GitHub at: github.com/bellingcat
And our other videos in the Tech-series: youtube.com/watch?v=ymCMy8OffHM&list=PLq6cQ--4f90icDJUwiGcPrFFLLguuZ0ht
Chapters:
Intro 00:00
How Bellingcat uses the tool 00:49
Walkthrough of the tool 01:17
Installing the tool 01:57
Risks of using the tool for your VK account 02:16
Setting up the tool with your login 02:59
Scraping a post 03:51
Downloading the scraped data 04:31
Ways to reach out to ask for help or contribute with future development 05:20
In this How To... episode, Bellingcat's Data Scientist Tristan Lee introduces you to the Bellingcat VK-url scraper tool. This tool allows you to scrape data, including videos and photos, from the Russian social media website 'VKontakte'. This way you can analyse and archive the content for your research.
Find the tool here: colab.research.google.com/github/bellingcat/open-source-research-notebooks/blob/main/notebooks/bellingcat/vk-url-scraper.ipynb
You can use this tool in Google Colab Notebooks, we previously made a video about how to use Notebooks here: youtube.com/watch?v=ymCMy8OffHM
You can join our discord server on this link: discord.com/invite/ehN58Pbh?event=1276551046591938610
And you can find all of our open-source research tools on our GitHub at: github.com/bellingcat
And our other videos in the Tech-series: youtube.com/watch?v=ymCMy8OffHM&list=PLq6cQ--4f90icDJUwiGcPrFFLLguuZ0ht
Chapters:
Intro 00:00
How Bellingcat uses the tool 00:49
Walkthrough of the tool 01:17
Installing the tool 01:57
Risks of using the tool for your VK account 02:16
Setting up the tool with your login 02:59
Scraping a post 03:51
Downloading the scraped data 04:31
Ways to reach out to ask for help or contribute with future development 05:20
