Python urllib2: Receive JSON response from url

import json
import urllib

url = 'http://example.com/file.json'
r = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
data = json.loads(r.read().decode(r.info().get_param('charset') or 'utf-8'))
print(data)

urllib, for Python 3.4
HTTPMessage, returned by r.info()

If the URL is returning valid JSON-encoded data, use the json library to decode that:

import urllib2
import json

response = urllib2.urlopen('https://api.instagram.com/v1/tags/pizza/media/XXXXXX')
data = json.load(response)   
print data