Dear Charles, I'm an e-Politics researcher and have been working with these materials for more than a few years now. As long as you're citing / screen shooting public posts (meaning you don't have to friend these personas to follow their activity. It is a different thing if it is a personal FB account or a Twitter account which requires permission from its holder in order to follow its activity) there is no ethical issue. Regarding copyrights - as long as the screenshots are for teaching and research, to the best of my knowledge, there is no copyrights violation. Only my 2 cents. Sharon Best Wishes, Sharon Haleva Amir, School of Governance and Social Policy, Beit Berl College, HCLT Fellow, (PhD Candidate) Faculty of Law, University of Haifa, ISRAEL. -------------------------------------------------- http://haifa.academia.edu/SharonHalevaAmir http://weblaw.haifa.ac.il/en/research/resstudents/pages/sharonha.aspx SSRN Author Page: http://ssrn.com/author=1227022 -----Original Message----- From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles Ess Sent: 04 August 2014 20:17 To: Air list Subject: [Air-L] an ethical question or two Dear AoIRists, I am editing a piece for a forthcoming journal issue; it includes two screenshots of tweets from Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and a screenshot of the Facebook page of a politician running for office in 2014, including their pictures and names. These are public figures very intentionally engaged in a public activity in a medium that functions as a de facto public sphere (or at least an approximation thereof). There is nothing in the screenshots that could be construed as potentially embarrassing, much less libelous, much less potentially warranting protection as private. I have gained the impression over the past few years that both in practice and in emerging guidelines codes, and law (specifically, based on what [little] I know of law surrounding freedom of speech and privacy issues in journalism in the U.S., the E.U., and Scandinavia), it is permissible to publish these without permission from the politicians in question. At most, if these were tweets and FB pages posted by U.S. politicians aimed at U.S. voters, we would have to note that the tweets and pictures were de facto copyright by their authors; to my knowledge, however, there is no parallel requirement on this side of the pond. Of course, it's usually when I think I know a good response to an ethical dilemma that I turn out to be missing something crucial - so: am I missing something crucial, or are we indeed on reasonably safe ground to publish the screenshots as is, no permissions required, no copyright notices included? Many thanks in advance, - charles ess Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern NO-0317 Oslo Norway email: charles.ess@media.uio.no _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/