In order to increase the engagement of Twitter with academic community, a fellowship program could be a valuable strategy. Basically what a I propose is that Twitter can have a program in which invites researches and academics to submit project ideas using the Twitter Data. Twitter will be then select the best ones to provide support (giving exclusive data access, internships, scholarships for PhD students, etc) in the areas required by the project. This of course can be (please!!!) a parallel initiative to the expansion of access for academic purposes. This is not a new idea. Facebook already have something like this, and I, as PhD student, am using the Academic Programs of Google Cloud Platform to store and process data.

You probably have something like this running, but I haven't see it. In that case make it visible so we can apply.

This is advantageous for you cause better PR, but also cause there is many scientist than want to tackle some online problems that the public opinion want companies to solve, like online trolling and hate speech, polarisation, Fake news, etc. By allowing research to partner with Twitter, you can improve your PR, help science, and have some clues of to resolve some pressing issues in your platform.