Which of these directions—, ethical research guidelines , or web scraping —best aligns with what you are trying to study?

It guides researchers through using Python-based tools to bypass closed APIs and extract public media from Instagram.

If you need to download Instagram videos or images to build a database for academic, social, or marketing research, this paper provides a roadmap alongside critical ethical warnings.

While there is no single "official" academic paper covering all commercial downloader tools, several published research papers address the technical development, data-scraping methods, and academic use of downloading Instagram Reels and videos.