Gathered data output (all platforms)

<aside> 💡 Whichever social media platform you gather data from, Phoenix will put it into a standard table. This table will be automatically connected to a dashboard that you can access in the visualise tab (more on that in this section).

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Contents of this page:

Understanding the rows of the standard table

The standard table has one row for each post-comment pair. What does that mean?

If you have only collected posts (no comments), then there will be one row for each post that you have collected.
If you have collected comments, then there will be one row for each comment you have collected and this row will also include the post.

For example, suppose you collect three posts only (with no comments), then your table will have the following rows:

Post 1
Post 2
Post 3

Suppose you then collect the comments for posts 1 and 3. Post 1 has 2 comments and Post 3 has 3 comments. Now your table will have these rows:

Post 1	Comment 1
Post 1	Comment 2
Post 2
Post 3	Comment 1
Post 3	Comment 2
Post 3	Comment 3

Understanding the columns of the standard table

Every row in your table has the same columns, which we explain below.

We have normalised some columns across all social media platforms. This means that we have assumed that some things specific to a platform mean more or less the same thing. This makes it easier for you to compare data from different social media platforms. How we have normalised specific columns is explained in detail in the table below, but there are three normalisations that we use for all columns and that will help you understand the table:

We call everything that is posted on a platform a “post”: a Facebook post, a tweet on X, the text description of a video posted on TikTok, the text description of a video posted on YouTube, the text caption of an image posted on Instagram, etc
We call everything that people write in reply to a post a “comment”: a Facebook comment, a reply on X, a comment on a TikTok video, a comment on a YouTube video, a comment on an Instagram image, etc
We call the entity that posted or commented the “author”: a Facebook page, a Facebook group, a Facebook account, an X handle, a TikTok account handle, a YouTube account, an Instagram profile, etc

We have marked some columns with “_pi” at the end to indicate that they contain personal information. We follow the definition of personal information dictated by GDPR. In order for Phoenix to be GDPR compliant, any column marked “_pi” will be deleted automatically from Phoenix after a specific amount of time (that you defined when you created your project).

<aside> 💡

When you are making graphs or tables in your dashboard (explained in this section), you may find it useful to have the table below open so you can check you are using the right data for your graphs and tables.

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Column name	Description
platform	The social media platform that this post or comment comes from.
post_author_category	The category of the author as assigned by the platform. Not all platforms assign categories, but where this is available, we include it in this column. For example: TikTok commercial users have a category assigned by TikTok.
post_author_class	If you create an author classification using Phoenix classify and you apply it to post authors, then it will appear in this column.
post_author_description_pi	The description of the author as provided in the platform. Not all platforms allow us to collect this information, but if we can collect it, then we include it in this column. Note: this is personal information.
post_author_followers_count	The number of other accounts following the author of the post. This is slightly different for each platform: TikTok account handle followers, Facebook page subscribers, Facebook group members, X handle followers, YouTube account subscribers, Instagram followers.
post_author_id	A unique id number that Phoenix assigns to the post author.
post_author_location	If the platform provides a location for the author, we include it in this column.
post_author_name_pi	The name of the post author. Note: this is personal information.
post_author_link_pi	The link to the author’s profile. Note: this is personal information.
post_class	If you create a text feature or complex model classification using Phoenix classify and you apply it to posts, then it will appear in this column.
post_comment_count	The number of comments on a post (at the time you ran the gather).
post_date	The date when the post was made.
post_gather_id	A unique id number that Phoenix assigns to the “gather” you used to get this post. It indicates that if you delete the gather with this id it will delete this post.
post_id	A unique id number that Phoenix assigns to each post. It is not personal information and cannot be traced back to the real platform id for that post
post_like_count	The number of likes on a post (at the time you ran the gather). This is slightly different for each platform: Facebook likes, TikTok diggCount, X likes / hearts, YouTube video likes, Instagram likes / hearts.
post_link_pi	The link to the post. Note: this is personal information.
post_share_count	The number of times a post is shared (at the time you run the gather). This is slightly different for each platform: Facebook shares, TikTok reposts, X retweets, YouTube video shares. (This is not relevant for Instagram.) You will not get this metric if you collect Facebook posts using a keyword search.
post_text_pi	The text of the post. Note: this is personal information.
comment_author_class	If you create an author classification using Phoenix classify and you apply it to comment authors, then it will appear in this column.
comment_author_id	A unique id number that Phoenix assigns to the comment author. It is not personal information and cannot be traced back to the real platform id for that author.
comment_author_name_pi	The name of the comment author. Note: this is personal information.
comment_class	If you create a text feature or complex model classification using Phoenix classify and you apply it to comments, then it will appear in this column.
comment_date	The date when the comment was made.
comment_gather_id	A unique id number that Phoenix assigns to the “gather” you used to get this comment. It indicates that if you delete the gather with this id it will delete this comment.
comment_id	A unique id number that Phoenix assigns to each comment. It is not personal information and cannot be traced back to the real platform id for the comment.
comment_like_count	The number of likes on a comment (at the time you ran the gather). This is only available on some platforms.
comment_link_pi	The link to the comment. This is only available on some platforms. Note: this is personal information.
comment_parent_post_id	The id number of the original post under which this comment was written.
comment_replied_to_id	If the comment is under another comment (as a reply), then the id of the comment it is replying to. If the comment is under a post, then the id of the post (that is, it will be the same as comment_parent_post_id).
comment_text_pi	The text of the comment. Note: this is personal information.
facebook_video_views	This is only for Facebook posts: where the post is a video, the number of times the video was viewed (at the time you ran the gather).
tiktok_post_plays	This is only for TikTok posts: the number of times the video was played (at the time you ran the gather).
x_tweet_quotes	This is only for X: the number of times the tweet was quoted (at the time you ran the gather).
phoenix_processed_at	The Timestamp when this row was last updated. Currently, this will be the same for all rows. You won't be needing to use this row for analysis.
phoenix_job_run_id	The id of phoenix pipeline job. This is used for developers to make it easier to find problems and can be ignored by an analyst. You won't be needing to use this row for analysis.