Slides for my presentation at ICA 2012 panel on Researching Social Media: Ethical and Methodological Challenges

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.

15. T3 Facebook Project
Chronicle of Higher Education
July 10, 2011

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