Informed consent for linking survey and social media data - Differences between platforms and data types

Abstract

Linking social media data with survey data is a way to combine the unique strengths and address some of the respective limitations of these two data types. As such linked data can be quite disclosive and potentially sensitive, it is important that researchers obtain informed consent from the individuals whose data are being linked. When formulating appropriate informed consent, there are several things that researchers need to take into account. Besides legal and ethical questions, key aspects to consider are the differences between platforms and data types. Depending on what type of social media data is collected, how the data are collected, and from which platform(s), different points need to be addressed in the informed consent. In this paper, we present three case studies in which survey data were linked with data from 1) Twitter, 2) Facebook, and 3) LinkedIn and discuss how the specific features of the platforms and data collection methods were covered in the informed consent. We compare the key attributes of these platforms that are relevant for the formulation of informed consent and also discuss scenarios of social media data collection and linking in which obtaining informed consent is not necessary. By presenting the specific case studies as well as general considerations, this paper is meant to provide guidance on informed consent for linked survey and social media data for both researchers and archivists working with this type of data.

Evaluation of Consent to Link Twitter Data to Survey Data

“…After removing such unusable handles, the difference in consent rate based on the position of the request is 21% in favour of placing the request at the beginning followed by a re‐ask for non‐consenters at the end of the interview. Bruer et al (2021) provide a good discussion about informed consent for different platforms and the issue of private versus public accounts which impacts usable consent rates.…”

“…All respondents were presented with a consent statement (consent request language found in Table A1) inquiring about their approval to share their Twitter handles with the research team for linking their survey data with their Twitter public information. Several Twitter informed consent language elements discussed in Bruer et al (2021) were used. These include how the collected public Twitter information will be accessed, stored and used, the duration of Twitter data collection, and signalling the username with an ‘@’ sign to clarify the piece of information needed.…”

Do News Actually “Find Me”? Using Digital Behavioral Data to Study the News-Finds-Me Phenomenon

“…They were shown a brief informed consent describing the browser plugin and the purpose of data collection in the online survey and could access an extended data-privacy information page hosted on an institutional website via a provided link. This procedure and the content of both the informed consent and privacy information page were based on work by Sloan and colleagues (2020) who combined survey and Twitter data in their study and are described in detail in a paper by Breuer et al (2021). The plugin continuously collected public posts if they appeared on participants' desktop screens while browsing their Facebook news feed.…”

Sharing social media data: The role of past experiences, attitudes, norms, and perceived behavioral control

“…A challenge that is specific to SMD is how to deal with the Terms of Services (ToS) of social media platforms and/or their application programming interfaces (APIs). If researchers collect data from social media platforms and use their APIs, they must follow the regulations laid out in their respective ToS to avoid losing data access (Mannheimer and Hull, 2017 ; Breuer et al, 2020 , 2021a ; Sloan et al, 2020 ; Assenmacher et al, 2021 ; Hemphill et al, 2021 ; Leonelli et al, 2021 ). Unlike legal regulations, such as the GDPR, the limitations for data sharing set in place by the companies and platforms have not only been established for reasons of data protection but also to protect their commercial interests (Lane et al, 2014 ; Thomson and Kilbride, 2015 ; Thomson, 2016 ; Hagen et al, 2019a , b ; Assenmacher et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Since many public posts in the news feeds of social media users include images or content from third parties, such as media outlets or companies, they are likely protected by copyright. Copyright especially makes the sharing of raw data difficult (Hagen et al, 2019b ; Breuer et al, 2021a ).…”