HIST 463/563 (Dr. Bosworth)

Most social media platforms incorporate a native search feature into their sites and mobile apps that lets you look for people, institutions, content, and topic areas within the platform. They mostly offer straightforward keyword searching. 

Some platforms, however, require a user to have an account and log in before they can run searches. These include: 

• Instagram
• X.com (formerly Twitter) 
• Facebook 

Some platforms allow limited use of their native search feature without an account or log in, including: 

• TikTok
• Tumblr

Some platforms allow full use of their native search feature without an account or log in, including: 

• Reddit
• YouTube

Google Advanced Search can be used to find content from most social media platforms without an account or logging in. (It seems to not work well for Twitter/X.com.) This is obviously useful if you do not have an account for that platform and do not wish to create one, but could also be of interest if you prefer Google Advanced Search to a platform's native search or would like to try both to see if you find more content related to your topic. 

You can access Google Advanced Search here: 

Enter search terms that represent your topic in one or more of the boxes at the top of the page labelled "all these words," "this exact word or phrase," and/or "any of these words." 

Then, limit your search to content from one social media platform by typing the URL for it's homepage - for example, instagram.com - in the "site or domain" box below. 

Google Advanced Search only enables you to search within one site or domain at a time, so you will need to repeat this search for each social media platform that interests you.