Towards more ethical social media field experiments

Abstract

The growing use of social media field experiments demands a rethink of current research ethics in computational social science. Here, we provide an empirical account of key user concerns and outline a number of critical discussions that need to take place to protect participants and help researchers to make use of the novel opportunities of digital data collection and field studies. Our primary contention is that we need to elicit public perceptions to devise more up-to-date guidelines for review boards whilst also allowing and encouraging researchers to arrive at more ethical individual study design choices themselves. We conclude by discussing how we can better strike a balance between meeting ethical guidelines and the concerns of social media users alongside maximizing scientific impact and credibility.