Aoir Ethics Panel 2: Platform Challenges

Comunicazioni Sociali. Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies, 2023

Since the late 1990s, Internet Research Ethics (IRE) has emerged as a burgeoning field, fueled by an evergrowing variety of ethical challenges and concerns (Zimmer and Buchanan, 2016). To name but a few, questions include how to minimize risks for researchers and research subjects, and issues surrounding informed consent and intersecting interests between corporations and academic approaches: both emphasize the importance of the integrity of researcher but also add challenges to Ethics Committees, who aim to confirm what research can or cannot be conducted (franzke et al., 2020). In recent years, the societal and technological landscape has changed and expanded still again: platforms such as social media and apps aggregate a significant number of users, generating new social, cultural, and media practices to study. Research into these realms is stimulating and challenging but further implies methodological and ethical issues surrounding both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Both ethnographies and big data approaches in particular have different but compelling ethical issues to consider (Zimmer, Kinder-Kurlanda, 2017; Zook et al, 2017). Actually, there is the need to study and comprehend users' behaviors and their socio-cultural implications but users need to be more aware of what may happen to the data they posted and also about the research they are involved into. Moreover, the complex nature of AI technology and platform logics has evoked thunderous academic debates surrounding buzzwords such as fake news, and the importance of taking up misinformation, hate speech and ethical reflection in social media research is more compelling than ever before. In addition to these changes, the role and importance of internet research ethics has grown for over a decade and the approach of having it incorporated by design into the research projects is increasingly more common (Ibiricu, Van Der Made, 2020). For example, when participating in public grants and fundings such as Horizon Europe, the evaluation of the ethics of research is an aspect required from the very beginning also for social sciences and humanities. This entails a specific attention to privacy and developing a new attitude and best practices also for these disciplines, with consequences for how research projects are developed and carried out, including ethics assessments from its very beginning through its dissemination. Among the new challenges there is also the need of making research data open, requiring a further level of reflection. Considering this landscape, the present issue of Comunicazioni Sociali. Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies focuses on the new challenges of the ethics of social media and internet research through eliciting papers addressing theoretical reflections and research projects across the world especially related to social sciences, media studies, performing arts, and cultural studies. This topic is consistent with the tradition of the journal and its attention to the research on media and its context.

Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2013

Social media Websites (SMWs) are increasingly popular research tools. These sites provide new opportunities for researchers, but raise new challenges for Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) that review these research protocols. As of yet, there is little-to-no guidance regarding how an IRB should review the studies involving SMWs. The purpose of this article was to review the common risks inherent in social media research and consider how researchers can consider these risks when writing research protocols. We focused this article on three common research approaches: observational research, interactive research, and survey/interview research. Concomitant with these research approaches, we gave particular attention to the issues pertinent to SMW research, including privacy, consent, and confidentiality. After considering these challenges, we outlined key considerations for both researchers and reviewers when creating or reviewing SMW IRB protocols. Our goal in this article was to provide a detailed examination of relevant ethics and regulatory issues for both researchers and those who review their protocols.

Across the globe, societies are experiencing significant flux and transformation in the way digital information and networked technologies are woven into and influence everyday life, workplace practices, social norms, and institutional structures. Likewise, all academic disciplines are challenged to make sense of these transformations in light of ethical research practice. Actively confronting these challenges means not only being aware of them, but thoughtfully considering how we might better address these challenges. This entry discusses various ethical challenges in applied research involving digital media or internet-related contexts.

Research Ethics

Although ethical guidelines for doing Internet research are available, most prominently those of the Association of Internet Researchers ( www.aoir.org ), ethical decision-making for research on publicly available, naturally-occurring data remains a major challenge. As researchers might also turn to others to inform their decisions, this article reviews recent research papers on publicly available, online data. Research involving forums such as Facebook pages, Twitter, YouTube, news comments, blogs, etc. is examined to see how authors report ethical considerations and how they quote these data. We included 132 articles published in discourse analysis-oriented journals between January 2017 and February 2020. Roughly one third of the articles (85 out of 132) did not discuss ethical issues, mostly claiming the data were publicly available. Quotations nevertheless tended to be anonymized, although retrievability of posts was generally not taken into account. In those articles in which e...

As use of the Internet has grown, so to has the amount of research concerning various aspects of computer-mediated communication (CMC). In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of research projects dealing with Internet-based, synchronous chat programs. Although timely, this increased research interest in synchronous chat media is problematic due to potential ethical dilemmas regarding data gathering and research publication. This paper examines the ethical problems related to subject identity, privacy and "chat copyright" in synchronous online research. Additionally, it addresses possible strategies for minimizing ethical conflict, while maintaining research integrity.

2001

All material in this paper (with a few minor changes + language check) will be published in my dissertation: Sveningsson, Malin. (2001). Creating a Sense of Community. Experiences from a Swedish Web Chat. Linköping: Linköping Studies in Art and Science.

The American Journal of Bioethics, 2014

The case vignettes presented here highlight ethical issues surrounding the use of social media in clinical research. To date, investigators and institutional review boards (IRBs) have had little in the way of specific guidance in this area. Written over 30 years ago, the Code of Federal Regulations for conducting human subjects research do not address social media (45 CFR 46). The U.S. Office for Human Research Protection, in its guidelines issued to address "significant challenges" presented by Internet research, recognized that "[e]thical conduct of Internet research…brings questions of scientific design into high relief…" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2013).

Facebook and other social network sites (SNSs) are used by hundreds of millions of people daily. 1 With such a large number of social interactions being made and recorded digitally, it is not surprising that researchers from many fields in the humanities and both physical and social sciences have exploited this rich source of data, with one recent survey listing 410 social science papers studying the Facebook SNS alone (W ilson et al. 2012). This includes HCI researchers, who have studied, for instance, mobile SNSs to understand location- ...

Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2013

Background: Increasing numbers of people living with a long-term health condition are putting personal health information online, including on discussion boards. Many discussion boards contain material of potential use to researchers; however, it is unclear how this information can and should be used by researchers. To date there has been no evaluation of the views of those individuals sharing health information online regarding the use of their shared information for research purposes.