The ‘Thorniness’ of Social Media Research: Identifying Internet Research Ethics (IRE) Challenges and Ambiguities in the Canadian Context

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Title

The ‘Thorniness’ of Social Media Research: Identifying Internet Research Ethics (IRE) Challenges and Ambiguities in the Canadian Context

Authors

Jacquelyn Burkell, Katie Mackinnon, Proshat Nouri-Behrouz

Publisher

Vita e Pensiero

Format

Article |

Pdf

Online from

11-2023

Doi

10.26350/001200_000184

Issn

0392-8667 (print) | 1827-7969 (digital)

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In this paper, we take stock of research being conducted and published in Canada in the past five years that engages with social media data to identify emerging and ongoing ethical challenges and ambiguities. Through examples drawn from the contemporary research landscape, we demonstrate that the ‘thorniness’ of social media research ethics stems from three main issues: 1) the evolution of existing platform and emergence of new platforms, introducing affordances that encourage personal disclosure in pervasive datafied environments; 2) new methods and tools that prioritize data access over research ethics; and 3) new topics of study that engage with sensitive data about vulnerable groups online. We argue that the rise of pervasive datafication and platform affordances that encourage spontaneous, vulnerable content production creates increased risks to human subjects, and that research ethics guidelines and practices must evolve to address these new and increased risks. Our goal is to provide direction for future work on social media research ethics that will empower researchers to navigate the complex terrain of thorny ethics. This work builds on debates about Internet research ethics best practices, and suggests that in addition to case-by-case approaches to research ethics, there should be increased attention paid to the unstable nature of social media and power of big data research. We suggest that research ethics should adopt a human-centered approach that privileges an individual’s desire to limit, control, examine, or engage with the data they have produced online, and that we must develop practices and methods that allow researchers to engage with these desires in the research process. Our analysis responds to work that surfaces public opinion regarding social media research and trustworthiness – work that argues that the standards by which REB/IRBs delineate public vs. private data are insufficient given the evolving contexts within which people are producing data and participating online. Maintaining privacy, anonymity and consent requires increased attention to the changing and unstable platform landscape in which researchers are conducting their studies.

The ‘Thorniness’ of Social Media Research: Identifying Internet Research Ethics (IRE) Challenges and Ambiguities in the Canadian Context by Katie Mackinnon, Proshat Nouri-Behrouz, Jacquelyn Burkell is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

keywords

Internet research ethics; datafication; research ethics boards; social media; platform studies.

Authors biography

Katie Mackinnon, University of Toronto ‒ katherine.mackinnon@mail.utoronto.ca; Proshat Nouri-Behrouz, London School of Economics ‒ p.nouri-behrouz@lse.ac.uk; Jacquelyn Burkell, University of Western Ontario ‒ jburkell@uwo.ca.

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