Re: [Air-L] Including screennames with tweets
Twitter is a public forum in the public sphere. There is no expectation of anonymity on speech in that regard. Having published a few pieces on Twitter including a book chapter just a few weeks ago, I have never failed to publish the screennames on the se accounts. The only reason not to include tweets is if the tweets are from a protected account, which is of course is not part of the public timeline. Best, Theo
Hi Theo, Respectfully, I think there's a few complications with this line of argument. 1) It appears to give carte blanche for researchers to do whatever they feel like with data because it's "public," and seems to alleviate them of any responsibility. For example, there is a Twitter account which reblogs pictures of debit cards that people have posted to Twitter. This is obviously sensitive information. Might not be ethical for a researcher to repost that content in an unedited fashion. Similarly, we might think of a research paper that focuses on Tweets related to mental health. A researcher might provide examples of tweets, but including a username could create harm. Not because of the tweet content, but because of the assumption/assertion the researcher is making about the individual. My main point here is that harm can still be done when using public data, and researchers should seek to minimize that. 2) Many users do not robustly understand how information flows on Twitter (I've done work in this area: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2056305117698493). While I understand the point you are making about lacking an expectation of anonymity in a legal sense, I think we need to figure out how to confront the fact that users are not given a lot of tools to understand how their data may be used. Cheers, Nick ________________________________ From: Air-L <air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of Theo Plothe <tp6316a@student.american.edu> Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 11:41:45 AM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Including screennames with tweets Twitter is a public forum in the public sphere. There is no expectation of anonymity on speech in that regard. Having published a few pieces on Twitter including a book chapter just a few weeks ago, I have never failed to publish the screennames on the se accounts. The only reason not to include tweets is if the tweets are from a protected account, which is of course is not part of the public timeline. Best, Theo _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Faoir.org&data=02%7C01%7Cnproferes%40uky.edu%7C2a30c7ca91124c680acb08d5e8d73dba%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636670933501572997&sdata=pwpH%2FHMiSyz4CVsAuP%2BFRnu5faW0GBNGUdTSDI3zg%2FI%3D&reserved=0 Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.aoir.org%2Flistinfo.cgi%2Fair-l-aoir.org&data=02%7C01%7Cnproferes%40uky.edu%7C2a30c7ca91124c680acb08d5e8d73dba%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636670933501572997&sdata=gA954esgOz3%2BhzvkRCICBPWQk7FP1Nmx0N0sdErHgD0%3D&reserved=0 Join the Association of Internet Researchers: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aoir.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cnproferes%40uky.edu%7C2a30c7ca91124c680acb08d5e8d73dba%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636670933501583002&sdata=srgEcOMe5FtUlkoMQ%2FWyQxW4J35B%2BOmP2KBtSKUrm8o%3D&reserved=0
Dear Becky, I believe it is important to define Twitter as an online public space if your unit of analysis is publicly available tweets at one point in time. In that case, similar rules of reporting the research findings that employs naturalistic observation (or ethnography) can be used in reporting research findings based on public records. Twitter users are technically not research participants as research participants, by definition, are people who voluntarily consented to take part in a research procedure. However, a social scientist can observe the use of a public space without receiving consent from people and using any identifiers in their reports. In fact, using identifying information on people using the space are strictly prohibited in observational research. I suspect you are looking at patterns of similarities and differences based on many records of data. Frankly, I do not see how often it would be necessary to quote a tweet in a published piece. One technique ethnographers have been using to deal with anonymity is having a personal data set that anonymizes identifying information (e.g. name) with pseudo names. Perhaps that old technique can become handy in Twitter context as well. Best, Ayşenur --------------------------------------------------- Ayşenur Benevento Ph.D. Candidate in Developmental Psychology The Graduate Center, City University of New York Research Associate with Children’s Environment Research Group<http://cergnyc.org/> www.aysenurbenevento.com<http://www.aysenurataman.com> On Jul 13, 2018, at 11:41 AM, Theo Plothe <tp6316a@student.american.edu<mailto:tp6316a@student.american.edu>> wrote: Twitter is a public forum in the public sphere. There is no expectation of anonymity on speech in that regard. Having published a few pieces on Twitter including a book chapter just a few weeks ago, I have never failed to publish the screennames on the se accounts. The only reason not to include tweets is if the tweets are from a protected account, which is of course is not part of the public timeline. Best, Theo _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org<mailto: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/
participants (3)
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Aysenur Ataman -
Proferes, Nicholas -
Theo Plothe