1. New Media, New Ethics:
How Social Media-based Research Demands New Attention
to Research Ethics
Michael Zimmer, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies
Director, Center for Information Policy Research
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
zimmerm@uwm.edu
www.michaelzimmer.org
2. Outline
What is Social Media (Internet) research?
What ethical concerns arise in social media
research?
Selected cases
Conceptual gaps in our ethical frameworks
Closing the gaps for researchers & IRBs
3. What does Social Media Research look like?
Using Social Media tools to engage in (traditional)
research
Online survey & data-collection tools
Subject recruitment via email, social media
Storing, processing, sharing data in the cloud
Using Social Media as the site for your research
Interviewing/observing subjects in chat rooms,
virtual worlds, online games
Collecting/merging data from online profiles,
feeds, newsgroups, blogs, archives, activity logs
4. Conceptual Gaps & Policy Vacuums
Computer technology transforms “many of our
human activities and social institutions,” and will
“leave us with policy and conceptual vacuums
about how to use computer technology”
“Often, either no policies for conduct in these
situations exist or existing policies seem
inadequate. A central task of Computer Ethics is
to determine what we should do in such cases,
that is, formulate policies to guide our actions.”
Jim Moor, “What is Computer Ethics?”
5. Ethical Concerns
The growing use of social media tools,
platforms & environments illuminate particular
ethical concerns for researchers:
Privacy
Anonymity vs. Identifiability
Consent
Harm & Human subjects
6. Illuminating Cases
1. Research on Tor network
2. Archiving of public Twitter streams
3. Harvesting Facebook profile information
4. Capturing teen email & text messaging
traffic
7. Research on Tor Network
Computer science researchers increasingly
interested in network traffic on the Tor
anonymity network
What kind of traffic is on this network?
What kind of users?
How secure is it?
Or, just capture Tor data as convenience sample
But users of Tor are intentionally seeking
additional privacy and anonymity
Research often not even vetted by IRBs
Soghoain, C. (2011) “Enforced Community Standards For Research on Users of the Tor Anonymity Network”
8. Archiving Twitter Streams
Is it ethical for researchers to follow and
systematically capture public Twitter streams
without first obtaining specific, informed
consent by the subjects?
Are tweets publications (texts), or utterances?
What are users’ expectations to how their
tweets are being found & used?
What if a user later changes her privacy
settings, or deletes tweets, etc
http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/02/12/is-it-ethical-to-harvest-public-twitter-accounts-without-consent/
9. LOC Archiving of Tweets
Library of Congress will archive all public tweets
6 month delay, restricted access to researchers only
Open questions:
Can users opt-out from being in permanent archive?
Can users delete tweets from archive?
Will geolocational and other profile data be included?
What about a public tweet that is re-tweeting a
private one?
Did users ever expect their tweets to become
permanent part of LOC’s archives?
http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/04/14/open-questions-about-library-of-congress-archiving-twitter-streams/
10. Pete Warden Facebook Dataset
Exploited flaw in Facebook’s architecture to
access and harvest publicly-viewable profile
information of 215 million users
http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/02/how-to-split-up-the-us.html
11. Pete Warden Facebook Dataset
Planned to release entire dataset – with all
personal information intact – to academic
community
Would it be acceptable to use this dataset?
Users knew (?) data was public, but did they
expect it to be harvested by bots, aggregated,
and made available as raw data?
Under threat of lawsuit from Facebook,
Warden destroyed the data
http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/02/12/why-pete-warden-should-not-release-profile-data-on-215-million-facebook-users/
12. T3 Facebook Project
Harvard-based Tastes, Ties, and Time (T3)
research project sought to understand social
network dynamics of large groups of students
Worked with Facebook & an “anonymous”
university to harvest the Facebook profiles of
an entire cohort of college freshmen
Repeated each year for their 4-year tenure
NSF mandated release of data, first wave in
Sept 2008
Zimmer, M. 2010. “But the data is already public”: On the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics & Information Technology.
13. “Anonymity” of the T3 Dataset
“All the data is cleaned so you can’t connect
anyone to an identity”
But dataset had unique cases (based on
codebook)
If we could identify the source university,
individuals could potentially be identified
Took me minimal effort to discern the source was
Harvard
The anonymity (and privacy) of subjects in the
study might be in jeopardy….
Zimmer, M. 2010. “But the data is already public”: On the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics & Information Technology.
14. Good-Faith Efforts to Protect Subject
Privacy
1. Only those data that were accessible by default
by each RA were collected
2. Removing/encoding of “identifying” information
3. Tastes & interests (“cultural footprints”) will only
be released after “substantial delay”
4. To download, must agree to “Terms and
Conditions of Use” statement
5. Reviewed & approved by Harvard’s IRB
Zimmer, M. 2010. “But the data is already public”: On the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics & Information Technology.
16. The Blackberry Project
Ongoing longitudinal study examining teen
behavior and sociability
Recruited 281 third and fourth graders in 2003
Gave them free Blackberries and unlimited plans
in 2009
Content of all text messages, e-mail messages,
and instant messages was saved to a secure
server owned by the researchers
Consent is renewed, but concerns over undue
influence, parental respect for youth privacy, etc
17. Illuminating Cases
1. Research on Tor network
2. Archiving of public Twitter streams
3. Harvesting Facebook profile information
4. Capturing teen email & text messaging
traffic
18. Ethical Concerns Conceptual Gaps
The growing use of social media tools,
platforms & environments illuminate particular
ethical concerns for researchers:
Privacy
Anonymity vs. Identifiability
Consent
Harm & Human subjects
And present us new conceptual gaps on how to
apply existing research ethics policies
19. Conceptual Gap: Privacy
Presumption that because subjects make information
available on a blog, Facebook, or Twitter, they don’t have
an expectation of privacy
Researchers/IRBs might assume everything is always
public, and was meant to be
Assumes no harm could come to subjects if data is already
“public”
New ethical problems…
Ignores contextual nature of sharing
Fails to recognize the strict dichotomy of public/private
doesn’t apply in the 2.0 world
Need to track if ToS/architecture have changed, or if users
even understand what is available to researchers
Nissenbaum, H. 2011. “Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life”
20. Conceptual Gap: Anonymity vs.
Identifiability
Presumption that stripping names & other
obvious identifiers provides sufficient anonymity
Assumes only PII allows re-identification
New ethical problems…
Ignores how anything can potentially identifiable
information and become the “missing link” to re-
identify an entire dataset
“Anonymous” datasets are not achievable and
provides false sense of protection
But how can we share data safely?
Ohm, P. “Broken promises of privacy: Responding to the surprising failure of anonymization.” UCLA Law Review
21. Conceptual Gap: Consent
Presumption that because something is shared or
available without a password, the subject is consenting
to it being harvested for research
Assumes no harm can come from use of data already
shared with friends or other contextually-bound
circles
New ethical problems…
Must recognize that a user making something public
online comes with a set of assumptions/expectations
about who can access and how
Does anything outside this need specific consent?
Must recognize how research methods might allow
un-anticipated access to “restricted” data
22. Conceptual Gap: Harm
Presumption that “harm” means risk of physical or
tangible impact on subject
Researchers often imply “data is already public, so
what harm could possibly happen”
New ethical problems
Must move beyond the concept of harm as requiring
a tangible consequence
Protecting from harm is more than protecting from
hackers, spammers, identity thieves, etc
Consider dignity/autonomy theories of harm
Must a “wrong” occur for there to be damage to the
subject?
Do subjects deserve control over the use of their data
streams?
23. Conceptual Gap: Human Subjects
Researchers (esp. CompSci) often interact only
with datasets, objects, or avatars, thus feel a
conceptual distance from an actual human
Often don’t consider what they do as “human
subject” research
New ethical problems
Must bridge this (artificial) distance between
researcher and the actual human subject
Also consider other stakeholders within the
complex arrangement of information
intermediaries
Carpenter, K & Dittrich, D. “Bridging the Distance: Removing the Technology Buffer and Seeking Consistent Ethical
Analysis in Computer Security Research”
24. Ethical Concerns Conceptual Gaps
The growing use of social media tools,
platforms & environments illuminate particular
ethical concerns for researchers:
Privacy
Anonymity vs. Identifiability
Consent
Harm & Human subjects
And present us new conceptual gaps on how to
apply existing research ethics policies
25. Conceptual Gaps Policy Vacuums
Researchers & IRBs are trying to do the right thing
when faced with research projects relying on Internet
tools and spaces
But the fluidity and complexity of Internet tools and
environments creates significant conceptual gaps
Leaving researchers & IRBs with considerable policy
vacuums
How should researchers deal with using Internet
tools in their projects?
How should IRBs review them?
And how can we still ensure research still gets done…
26. Removing the gaps, filling the vacuums
Scholarship
Buchanan & Ess studying how IRBs deal with
Internet research
Exploring new dimensions of Internet research
ethics by Markham; Soghoian; Carpenter & Dittrich;
and others (cited within)
Resources
“Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Resource
Center and Commons” www.InternetResearchEthics.org
“Ethical decision-making and Internet research:
Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working
Committee”
27. Removing the gaps, filling the vacuums
Education & outreach
Growing focus at PRIM&R and related events
Engage disciplinary conferences (ACM, ICA,
SOUPS, etc)
Policy guidance
Advising SACHRP on “The Internet in Human
Subjects Research”
Require Internet Research Ethics training for
all IRBs? For researchers?
28. New Media, New Ethics:
How Social Media-based Research Demands New Attention
to Research Ethics
Michael Zimmer, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies
Director, Center for Information Policy Research
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
zimmerm@uwm.edu
www.michaelzimmer.org