An initial exploration of ethical research practices regarding automated data extraction from online social media user profiles

Abstract

The popularity of social media, especially online social networks, has led to the availability of potentially rich sources of data, which researchers can use for extraction via automated means. However, the process of automated extraction from user profiles results in a variety of ethical considerations and challenges for researchers. This paper examines this question further, surveying researchers to gain information regarding their experiences of, and thoughts about, the challenges to ethical research practices associated with automated extraction. Results indicated that, in comparison with two or three years ago researchers are more aware of ethical research practices, and are implementing them into their studies. However, areas such as informed consent suffer from a lack of implementation in research studies. This is due to various factors, such as social media ‘Terms of Service’, challenges with large volumes of data, how far to take informed consent, and the definition of online informed consent. Researchers face a range of issues from digital rights to clear guidance. This paper discusses the findings of the survey questionnaire and explores how the findings affect researchers.

Toward Reproducibility in Online Social Network Research

“…Golders and Macy conduct a wide-ranging survey of OSN research in sociology [14], and outline privacy as a research challenge, but not ethics, and discuss methodology but in the context of training sociologists in methods for collecting OSN data. Alim surveys OSN researchers about ethics concerns, and finds that 25% of respondents sought ethics approval for their studies [2]. This is higher than the proportion that we find reported on ethics approval, although not all authors might report this, and indeed there might be an element of selection bias, since researchers more interested in ethics might have responded to this particular survey.…”

Ethical Considerations in Using Social Media to Engage Research Participants: Perspectives of Australian Researchers and Ethics Committee Members

“…Other literature is sparse, although a survey of Australian HREC members found more than 75% did not use any review tool or policy and more than 90% did not use any Internet-specific guideline when reviewing Internet research protocols (Jackson, Brownlow, & Machin, 2016). The range of resources used are similar to those reported among researchers using SM as a data source who refer to general ethical principles, Terms of Service of SM sites, and their personal code of ethics (Alim, 2014;Vitak et al, 2016).…”

Attitudes Toward the Ethics of Research Using Social Media: A Systematic Review

“…In addition, researchers were worried that the risks were not taken seriously by international review boards (IRBs) [43,70]. Deidentification of social media posts was seen as crucial to minimize negative consequences [65].…”

“…Of the 17 studies, 12 explored the ethical concerns of social media users [ 38 , 40 , 56 - 67 ] and 5 asked researchers (mainly academics) [ 42 , 43 , 68 - 71 ] ( Table 1 and Multimedia Appendix 4 ). The earliest study was published in 2001 and the latest in 2016, with 12 studies published after 2012.…”

“…Whereas the ethical issues of social media research have been much debated [ 34 - 37 ], the attitudes of social media users (either posters or lurkers) and researchers have rarely been sought [ 38 - 42 ]. Researchers currently seek guidance from a wide variety of sources, such as individual institutions, research supervisors, subject specialist guidance [ 43 ], and increasing guidelines proposed specifically for research using social media [ 39 , 44 - 49 ].…”