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I am interested in collecting tweets and social media posts from politicians in the USA. Specifically from their political social media accounts.

After reading this finextra article, I believe this qualifies as "processing public or professional life" personal data. Since I will be collecting tweets, they have already agreed to have their data stored. I believe I must merely inform them that I am processing their data.

My questions are, do I need to inform or ask for consent from the politicians I am collecting data from? Then again, politicians are public figures and their social media accounts are specifically for public consumption. Would this qualify as data explicitly public sphere and thus require no consent?

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It sounds like this would fall under "journalistic purposes" and hence be exempt.

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  • The article you linked does not exempt journalistic purposes from the GDPR, it just allows member states to pass their own laws that do exempt these purposes. But your answer points in the right direction: this is likely allowed. Even not considering any exemptions, the public might have a strong legitimate interest that allows processing politician's tweets – no consent required. – amon May 26 '19 at 20:42
  • It says "Member states shall provide exemptions and derogations ...", so I would read it as requiring these exemptions rather than just providing the option. – Paul Johnson May 27 '19 at 8:37

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