Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch
Dear Air-L Community, I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research? Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon, Ph.D. Candidate The Department of Sociology & Anthropology The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hi, Depending on the scraping technique that you use, you can filter by date of birth – and accept all if the skewing and falsification that goes with that. It's a great question and one that we overlooked partly because the hashtag was one that seemed highly unlikely to attract < 18 yos. Best, Cormac On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 at 07:47, Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Air-L Community,
I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research?
Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon,
Ph.D. Candidate
The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem _______________________________________________ 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/
-- Mobile:+33 7 68 59 39 17 Twitter: ocaoimh Skype: c.ocaoimh <okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com>
Hi, one fairly standard approach is to go ahead and conduct your research - though probably with the additional step of setting up a second database that assigns random identifiers to the original accounts / profiles. Once you have completed your analyses - then the question becomes what you need to include as explicit quotes in the publication / dissemination phase. Typically, these are only a few - i.e., in contrast with 10s if not 100s of thousands (if not more) of texts gathered in. Whereas informed consent is impossible for the latter - it is considerably more feasible for the former. So one possibility is to contact the writers you want to quote and ask for their permission. Of course, this will not directly address the question as to whether they are minors - and you're exactly right that this is a critical ethical (and, in many jurisdictions, a legal) issue. At this point, some will argue that this is not your problem - the informants have read (well, at least clicked through) the ToS and that such posts are by a kind of default public and so don't require anything more than acknowledgement (copyright to the author). If a minor is involved, on this view, ethical obligations to vulnerable populations are overridden by a kind of legal coverage ostensibly provided by their agreeing to the ToS. Others - especially from deontological and ethics of care perspectives - will argue that protection of minors overrides any legal contract established in the ToS. How you directly ascertain the identity of someone on Twitter while asking for their permission to use their quote is, of course, not unproblematic. But these days, it's harder to be a dog unnoticed as a dog on the Internet and so it might be more straightforward than say 10 or certainly 20 years ago. My 2 cents - good luck and looking forward to the discussion! - charles On 18/12/17 07:46, Lior Beserman wrote:
Dear Air-L Community,
I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research?
Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon,
Ph.D. Candidate
The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem _______________________________________________ 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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no
Children cannot legally consent to use of their personal data, precisely because they are children. Hence in the US COPPA applies, and in Europe the General Data Protection Regulation., both of which require verifiable parental consent for the use of children's personal data. Much depends on the legal definition of personal data, of course. I would also urge a child-rights approach to research ethics. For instance, contrary to what many researchers believe, and contrary to companies' T&C, in my research children have told me that they consider Facebook to be public and Twitter to be privacy (cf Nissenbaum's contextual integrity). So my understanding is that this is incorrect below, and that much social media research is improper.... Best, Sonia -----Original Message----- From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles M. Ess Sent: 18 December 2017 08:58 To: Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com>; air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch Hi, one fairly standard approach is to go ahead and conduct your research - though probably with the additional step of setting up a second database that assigns random identifiers to the original accounts / profiles. Once you have completed your analyses - then the question becomes what you need to include as explicit quotes in the publication / dissemination phase. Typically, these are only a few - i.e., in contrast with 10s if not 100s of thousands (if not more) of texts gathered in. Whereas informed consent is impossible for the latter - it is considerably more feasible for the former. So one possibility is to contact the writers you want to quote and ask for their permission. Of course, this will not directly address the question as to whether they are minors - and you're exactly right that this is a critical ethical (and, in many jurisdictions, a legal) issue. At this point, some will argue that this is not your problem - the informants have read (well, at least clicked through) the ToS and that such posts are by a kind of default public and so don't require anything more than acknowledgement (copyright to the author). If a minor is involved, on this view, ethical obligations to vulnerable populations are overridden by a kind of legal coverage ostensibly provided by their agreeing to the ToS. Others - especially from deontological and ethics of care perspectives - will argue that protection of minors overrides any legal contract established in the ToS. How you directly ascertain the identity of someone on Twitter while asking for their permission to use their quote is, of course, not unproblematic. But these days, it's harder to be a dog unnoticed as a dog on the Internet and so it might be more straightforward than say 10 or certainly 20 years ago. My 2 cents - good luck and looking forward to the discussion! - charles On 18/12/17 07:46, Lior Beserman wrote:
Dear Air-L Community,
I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research?
Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon,
Ph.D. Candidate
The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem _______________________________________________ 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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.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/
perfect - thanks for the most helpful clarification, Sonia! - c. On 18/12/17 10:35, Livingstone,S wrote:
Children cannot legally consent to use of their personal data, precisely because they are children. Hence in the US COPPA applies, and in Europe the General Data Protection Regulation., both of which require verifiable parental consent for the use of children's personal data. Much depends on the legal definition of personal data, of course.
I would also urge a child-rights approach to research ethics. For instance, contrary to what many researchers believe, and contrary to companies' T&C, in my research children have told me that they consider Facebook to be public and Twitter to be privacy (cf Nissenbaum's contextual integrity). So my understanding is that this is incorrect below, and that much social media research is improper....
Best, Sonia
-----Original Message----- From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles M. Ess Sent: 18 December 2017 08:58 To: Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com>; air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch
Hi,
one fairly standard approach is to go ahead and conduct your research - though probably with the additional step of setting up a second database that assigns random identifiers to the original accounts / profiles.
Once you have completed your analyses - then the question becomes what you need to include as explicit quotes in the publication / dissemination phase. Typically, these are only a few - i.e., in contrast with 10s if not 100s of thousands (if not more) of texts gathered in. Whereas informed consent is impossible for the latter - it is considerably more feasible for the former. So one possibility is to contact the writers you want to quote and ask for their permission.
Of course, this will not directly address the question as to whether they are minors - and you're exactly right that this is a critical ethical (and, in many jurisdictions, a legal) issue.
At this point, some will argue that this is not your problem - the informants have read (well, at least clicked through) the ToS and that such posts are by a kind of default public and so don't require anything more than acknowledgement (copyright to the author). If a minor is involved, on this view, ethical obligations to vulnerable populations are overridden by a kind of legal coverage ostensibly provided by their agreeing to the ToS.
Others - especially from deontological and ethics of care perspectives - will argue that protection of minors overrides any legal contract established in the ToS. How you directly ascertain the identity of someone on Twitter while asking for their permission to use their quote is, of course, not unproblematic. But these days, it's harder to be a dog unnoticed as a dog on the Internet and so it might be more straightforward than say 10 or certainly 20 years ago.
My 2 cents - good luck and looking forward to the discussion!
- charles
On 18/12/17 07:46, Lior Beserman wrote:
Dear Air-L Community,
I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research?
Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon,
Ph.D. Candidate
The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem _______________________________________________ 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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no
That's a really good pint Sonia. Thanks! On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 at 10:59, Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no> wrote:
perfect - thanks for the most helpful clarification, Sonia! - c.
On 18/12/17 10:35, Livingstone,S wrote:
Children cannot legally consent to use of their personal data, precisely because they are children. Hence in the US COPPA applies, and in Europe the General Data Protection Regulation., both of which require verifiable parental consent for the use of children's personal data. Much depends on the legal definition of personal data, of course.
I would also urge a child-rights approach to research ethics. For instance, contrary to what many researchers believe, and contrary to companies' T&C, in my research children have told me that they consider Facebook to be public and Twitter to be privacy (cf Nissenbaum's contextual integrity). So my understanding is that this is incorrect below, and that much social media research is improper....
Best, Sonia
-----Original Message----- From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles M. Ess Sent: 18 December 2017 08:58 To: Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com>; air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch
Hi,
one fairly standard approach is to go ahead and conduct your research - though probably with the additional step of setting up a second database that assigns random identifiers to the original accounts / profiles.
Once you have completed your analyses - then the question becomes what you need to include as explicit quotes in the publication / dissemination phase. Typically, these are only a few - i.e., in contrast with 10s if not 100s of thousands (if not more) of texts gathered in. Whereas informed consent is impossible for the latter - it is considerably more feasible for the former. So one possibility is to contact the writers you want to quote and ask for their permission.
Of course, this will not directly address the question as to whether they are minors - and you're exactly right that this is a critical ethical (and, in many jurisdictions, a legal) issue.
At this point, some will argue that this is not your problem - the informants have read (well, at least clicked through) the ToS and that such posts are by a kind of default public and so don't require anything more than acknowledgement (copyright to the author). If a minor is involved, on this view, ethical obligations to vulnerable populations are overridden by a kind of legal coverage ostensibly provided by their agreeing to the ToS.
Others - especially from deontological and ethics of care perspectives - will argue that protection of minors overrides any legal contract established in the ToS. How you directly ascertain the identity of someone on Twitter while asking for their permission to use their quote is, of course, not unproblematic. But these days, it's harder to be a dog unnoticed as a dog on the Internet and so it might be more straightforward than say 10 or certainly 20 years ago.
My 2 cents - good luck and looking forward to the discussion!
- charles
On 18/12/17 07:46, Lior Beserman wrote:
Dear Air-L Community,
I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research?
Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon,
Ph.D. Candidate
The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem _______________________________________________ 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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.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/
-- Mobile:+33 7 68 59 39 17 Twitter: ocaoimh Skype: c.ocaoimh <okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com>
The central issue is the absence of any verifiable age data on Twitter. With the exception of "verified" accounts, where the verified user has a known public birthdate listed somewhere other than Twitter, there is no age data. Any account could be underage. No doubt there are minors "passing" for adults and the opposite as well. So, how would we know? You could go by the Twitter user description, which is a self-assigned brief biography that sometimes includes social demographic information (ex., high school athlete, states ones age directly, the photograph, etc.) but none of that is verified. You could cross-check user by user against other public information. For example, my son is @liamcs10 on Twitter. He is 15. If you Google his name you can verify he is a minor because he plays on a U17 soccer club and his current roster picture is online. At the level of the ethnographic research, you could do this time-consuming forensic work, but it would only work in some cases, not all, and would never scale up to the type of research many are doing with Twitter data. So you have a problem. If you need to assure an IRB or other research supervisory board there are no children in your Twitter data: it cannot really be done. Stu Stu Shulman <https://twitter.com/StuartWShulman>MA Olympic Development Program (ODP), Assistant Coach Region I ODP, 2005 Boys ID Camp Staff Coach NEFC-West 2008 Boys, Head Coach On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 5:07 AM, Cormac O'Keeffe <okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com> wrote:
That's a really good pint Sonia. Thanks!
On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 at 10:59, Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no> wrote:
perfect - thanks for the most helpful clarification, Sonia! - c.
On 18/12/17 10:35, Livingstone,S wrote:
Children cannot legally consent to use of their personal data, precisely because they are children. Hence in the US COPPA applies, and in Europe the General Data Protection Regulation., both of which require verifiable parental consent for the use of children's personal data. Much depends on the legal definition of personal data, of course.
I would also urge a child-rights approach to research ethics. For instance, contrary to what many researchers believe, and contrary to companies' T&C, in my research children have told me that they consider Facebook to be public and Twitter to be privacy (cf Nissenbaum's contextual integrity). So my understanding is that this is incorrect below, and that much social media research is improper....
Best, Sonia
-----Original Message----- From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles M. Ess Sent: 18 December 2017 08:58 To: Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com>; air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch
Hi,
one fairly standard approach is to go ahead and conduct your research - though probably with the additional step of setting up a second database that assigns random identifiers to the original accounts / profiles.
Once you have completed your analyses - then the question becomes what you need to include as explicit quotes in the publication / dissemination phase. Typically, these are only a few - i.e., in contrast with 10s if not 100s of thousands (if not more) of texts gathered in. Whereas informed consent is impossible for the latter - it is considerably more feasible for the former. So one possibility is to contact the writers you want to quote and ask for their permission.
Of course, this will not directly address the question as to whether they are minors - and you're exactly right that this is a critical ethical (and, in many jurisdictions, a legal) issue.
At this point, some will argue that this is not your problem - the informants have read (well, at least clicked through) the ToS and that such posts are by a kind of default public and so don't require anything more than acknowledgement (copyright to the author). If a minor is involved, on this view, ethical obligations to vulnerable populations are overridden by a kind of legal coverage ostensibly provided by their agreeing to the ToS.
Others - especially from deontological and ethics of care perspectives
will argue that protection of minors overrides any legal contract established in the ToS. How you directly ascertain the identity of someone on Twitter while asking for their permission to use their quote is, of course, not unproblematic. But these days, it's harder to be a dog unnoticed as a dog on the Internet and so it might be more straightforward than say 10 or certainly 20 years ago.
My 2 cents - good luck and looking forward to the discussion!
- charles
On 18/12/17 07:46, Lior Beserman wrote:
Dear Air-L Community,
I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research?
Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon,
Ph.D. Candidate
The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem _______________________________________________ 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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.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/
-- Mobile:+33 7 68 59 39 17 Twitter: ocaoimh Skype: c.ocaoimh <okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com> _______________________________________________ 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
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Hi Lior, Are you planning on publishing individual tweets verbatim? You mentioned discourse analysis and of course giving some examples of the data is helpful for the reader. However, I’d imagine by having a discussion in your methods section about the hashtag you are working with and stating the reasons why you withdraw from re-purposing those tweets and re-publishing them in another platform, you may still run your analysis. I work with Instagram photos of children and make sure I include photos with no face in my text. With visual narratives, that’s possible because, thankfully, body posture recognition is not yet on the book. Of course, you cannot blur any words in a tweet or any verbal narrative. I may be wrong to say this but quoting tweets verbatim is problematic not only for minors but for ALL people. What do everyone think? 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.aysenurataman.com<http://www.aysenurataman.com> On Dec 18, 2017, at 5:48 AM, Stuart Shulman <stuart.shulman@gmail.com<mailto:stuart.shulman@gmail.com>> wrote: The central issue is the absence of any verifiable age data on Twitter. With the exception of "verified" accounts, where the verified user has a known public birthdate listed somewhere other than Twitter, there is no age data. Any account could be underage. No doubt there are minors "passing" for adults and the opposite as well. So, how would we know? You could go by the Twitter user description, which is a self-assigned brief biography that sometimes includes social demographic information (ex., high school athlete, states ones age directly, the photograph, etc.) but none of that is verified. You could cross-check user by user against other public information. For example, my son is @liamcs10 on Twitter. He is 15. If you Google his name you can verify he is a minor because he plays on a U17 soccer club and his current roster picture is online. At the level of the ethnographic research, you could do this time-consuming forensic work, but it would only work in some cases, not all, and would never scale up to the type of research many are doing with Twitter data. So you have a problem. If you need to assure an IRB or other research supervisory board there are no children in your Twitter data: it cannot really be done. Stu Stu Shulman <https://twitter.com/StuartWShulman>MA Olympic Development Program (ODP), Assistant Coach Region I ODP, 2005 Boys ID Camp Staff Coach NEFC-West 2008 Boys, Head Coach On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 5:07 AM, Cormac O'Keeffe <okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com<mailto:okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com>> wrote: That's a really good pint Sonia. Thanks! On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 at 10:59, Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no<mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no>> wrote: perfect - thanks for the most helpful clarification, Sonia! - c. On 18/12/17 10:35, Livingstone,S wrote: Children cannot legally consent to use of their personal data, precisely because they are children. Hence in the US COPPA applies, and in Europe the General Data Protection Regulation., both of which require verifiable parental consent for the use of children's personal data. Much depends on the legal definition of personal data, of course. I would also urge a child-rights approach to research ethics. For instance, contrary to what many researchers believe, and contrary to companies' T&C, in my research children have told me that they consider Facebook to be public and Twitter to be privacy (cf Nissenbaum's contextual integrity). So my understanding is that this is incorrect below, and that much social media research is improper.... Best, Sonia -----Original Message----- From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles M. Ess Sent: 18 December 2017 08:58 To: Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com<mailto:liorbeserman@gmail.com>>; air-l@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch Hi, one fairly standard approach is to go ahead and conduct your research - though probably with the additional step of setting up a second database that assigns random identifiers to the original accounts / profiles. Once you have completed your analyses - then the question becomes what you need to include as explicit quotes in the publication / dissemination phase. Typically, these are only a few - i.e., in contrast with 10s if not 100s of thousands (if not more) of texts gathered in. Whereas informed consent is impossible for the latter - it is considerably more feasible for the former. So one possibility is to contact the writers you want to quote and ask for their permission. Of course, this will not directly address the question as to whether they are minors - and you're exactly right that this is a critical ethical (and, in many jurisdictions, a legal) issue. At this point, some will argue that this is not your problem - the informants have read (well, at least clicked through) the ToS and that such posts are by a kind of default public and so don't require anything more than acknowledgement (copyright to the author). If a minor is involved, on this view, ethical obligations to vulnerable populations are overridden by a kind of legal coverage ostensibly provided by their agreeing to the ToS. Others - especially from deontological and ethics of care perspectives - will argue that protection of minors overrides any legal contract established in the ToS. How you directly ascertain the identity of someone on Twitter while asking for their permission to use their quote is, of course, not unproblematic. But these days, it's harder to be a dog unnoticed as a dog on the Internet and so it might be more straightforward than say 10 or certainly 20 years ago. My 2 cents - good luck and looking forward to the discussion! - charles On 18/12/17 07:46, Lior Beserman wrote: Dear Air-L Community, I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research? Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon, Ph.D. Candidate The Department of Sociology & Anthropology The Hebrew University of Jerusalem _______________________________________________ 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/ -- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no<mailto:c.m.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/ -- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no<mailto:c.m.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/ -- Mobile:+33 7 68 59 39 17 Twitter: ocaoimh Skype: c.ocaoimh <okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com<mailto:okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com>> _______________________________________________ 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<http://air-l-aoir.org> Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ _______________________________________________ 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/
Last year, some colleagues and I encountered a similar issue when writing up a report about the Black Lives Matter movement's use of social media. We realized that requesting permission to discuss tweets would introduce unacceptable selection bias into our results, but also that quoting tweets without permission would leave participants with no means of opting out. To address this dilemma, we implemented the following three criteria for discussing tweets (quoted from p. 86 of the report):
»» Posting links to tweets rather than reproducing their full text. This allows anyone who would like to opt out of this research to do so by deleting their tweets. Reproducing fulltext tweets in the report would have eliminated this possibility. »» Linking only to tweets that had collected a minimum of 100 retweets by December 2015. This makes it less likely that our research will shine an unwanted spotlight on previously obscure content. »» Linking only to tweets posted by users who had at least 3,000 followers or were Twitter- verified by December 2015. That follower threshold places users in the top 1% by followers. We did this to reduce the likelihood of exposing relatively unknown users to unwanted public scrutiny.
Almost two years out, we have received no complaints by any of the users whose tweets we linked to. The full report is available here: http://cmsimpact.org/resource/beyond-hashtags-ferguson-blacklivesmatter-onli... Best, /DEEN On 12/18/2017 10:48 AM, Aysenur Ataman wrote:
Hi Lior,
Are you planning on publishing individual tweets verbatim? You mentioned discourse analysis and of course giving some examples of the data is helpful for the reader. However, I’d imagine by having a discussion in your methods section about the hashtag you are working with and stating the reasons why you withdraw from re-purposing those tweets and re-publishing them in another platform, you may still run your analysis.
I work with Instagram photos of children and make sure I include photos with no face in my text. With visual narratives, that’s possible because, thankfully, body posture recognition is not yet on the book. Of course, you cannot blur any words in a tweet or any verbal narrative. I may be wrong to say this but quoting tweets verbatim is problematic not only for minors but for ALL people. What do everyone think?
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.aysenurataman.com<http://www.aysenurataman.com>
On Dec 18, 2017, at 5:48 AM, Stuart Shulman <stuart.shulman@gmail.com<mailto:stuart.shulman@gmail.com>> wrote:
The central issue is the absence of any verifiable age data on Twitter. With the exception of "verified" accounts, where the verified user has a known public birthdate listed somewhere other than Twitter, there is no age data. Any account could be underage. No doubt there are minors "passing" for adults and the opposite as well.
So, how would we know?
You could go by the Twitter user description, which is a self-assigned brief biography that sometimes includes social demographic information (ex., high school athlete, states ones age directly, the photograph, etc.) but none of that is verified. You could cross-check user by user against other public information. For example, my son is @liamcs10 on Twitter. He is 15. If you Google his name you can verify he is a minor because he plays on a U17 soccer club and his current roster picture is online.
At the level of the ethnographic research, you could do this time-consuming forensic work, but it would only work in some cases, not all, and would never scale up to the type of research many are doing with Twitter data.
So you have a problem. If you need to assure an IRB or other research supervisory board there are no children in your Twitter data: it cannot really be done.
Stu
Stu Shulman <https://twitter.com/StuartWShulman>MA Olympic Development Program (ODP), Assistant Coach Region I ODP, 2005 Boys ID Camp Staff Coach NEFC-West 2008 Boys, Head Coach
On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 5:07 AM, Cormac O'Keeffe <okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com<mailto:okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com>> wrote:
That's a really good pint Sonia. Thanks!
On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 at 10:59, Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no<mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no>> wrote:
perfect - thanks for the most helpful clarification, Sonia! - c.
On 18/12/17 10:35, Livingstone,S wrote: Children cannot legally consent to use of their personal data, precisely because they are children. Hence in the US COPPA applies, and in Europe the General Data Protection Regulation., both of which require verifiable parental consent for the use of children's personal data. Much depends on the legal definition of personal data, of course.
I would also urge a child-rights approach to research ethics. For instance, contrary to what many researchers believe, and contrary to companies' T&C, in my research children have told me that they consider Facebook to be public and Twitter to be privacy (cf Nissenbaum's contextual integrity). So my understanding is that this is incorrect below, and that much social media research is improper....
Best, Sonia
-----Original Message----- From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles M. Ess Sent: 18 December 2017 08:58 To: Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com<mailto:liorbeserman@gmail.com>>; air-l@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch
Hi,
one fairly standard approach is to go ahead and conduct your research - though probably with the additional step of setting up a second database that assigns random identifiers to the original accounts / profiles.
Once you have completed your analyses - then the question becomes what you need to include as explicit quotes in the publication / dissemination phase. Typically, these are only a few - i.e., in contrast with 10s if not 100s of thousands (if not more) of texts gathered in. Whereas informed consent is impossible for the latter - it is considerably more feasible for the former. So one possibility is to contact the writers you want to quote and ask for their permission.
Of course, this will not directly address the question as to whether they are minors - and you're exactly right that this is a critical ethical (and, in many jurisdictions, a legal) issue.
At this point, some will argue that this is not your problem - the informants have read (well, at least clicked through) the ToS and that such posts are by a kind of default public and so don't require anything more than acknowledgement (copyright to the author). If a minor is involved, on this view, ethical obligations to vulnerable populations are overridden by a kind of legal coverage ostensibly provided by their agreeing to the ToS.
Others - especially from deontological and ethics of care perspectives - will argue that protection of minors overrides any legal contract established in the ToS. How you directly ascertain the identity of someone on Twitter while asking for their permission to use their quote is, of course, not unproblematic. But these days, it's harder to be a dog unnoticed as a dog on the Internet and so it might be more straightforward than say 10 or certainly 20 years ago.
My 2 cents - good luck and looking forward to the discussion!
- charles
On 18/12/17 07:46, Lior Beserman wrote: Dear Air-L Community,
I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research?
Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon,
Ph.D. Candidate
The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem _______________________________________________ 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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no<mailto:c.m.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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no<mailto:c.m.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/
-- Mobile:+33 7 68 59 39 17 Twitter: ocaoimh Skype: c.ocaoimh <okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com<mailto:okeeffe.cormac@gmail.com>> _______________________________________________ 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<http://air-l-aoir.org>
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_______________________________________________ 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
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_______________________________________________ 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/
-- Deen Freelon, Ph.D. Associate Professor School of Media and Journalism, UNC-Chapel Hill http://dfreelon.org | @dfreelon <https://twitter.com/dfreelon> | https://github.com/dfreelon
As a small clarification of the clarification ... I took the original post to be headed in the direction of wanting to avoid using material from minors, and that the primary question was then how to to do so. Of course, as Sonia makes exquisitely clear, if the researcher does want to make use of material from minors / children, then a strongly different set of requirements comes into play. Legally and ethically (to my knowledge), informed consent can generally be given by parents or guardians as proxies for the children - but within the boundaries spelled out, e.g., in the documents / frameworks Sonia points to if the research is within the relevant jurisdictions. But however that may be, Sonia's plea for a child-rights approach is (of course) also very helpful - in part as it points to the distinction I mentioned between what may be legally acceptable but what some researchers, especially from deontological (rights-oriented) and/or care ethics perspectives, would consider ethically requisite: namely, whatever the technical and legal aspects - what are the _expectations_ of the persons in play here? There are many, many examples of researchers who, taking the latter perspective(s), have chosen to respect the expectations of privacy held by their informants, even when such expectations are not legally or technically supported. Such respect then includes precisely respect for rights to privacy, and thus would trigger guidelines and practices for protecting those rights for minors. I suspect that Sonia has considerably more than this in mind by a "childs-rights approach to research ethics," but perhaps this is one point of overlap? Will, of course, be eager to see / read / learn of other perspectives and experiences as well. again, many thanks, - c. On 18/12/17 10:59, Charles M. Ess wrote:
perfect - thanks for the most helpful clarification, Sonia! - c.
On 18/12/17 10:35, Livingstone,S wrote:
Children cannot legally consent to use of their personal data, precisely because they are children. Hence in the US COPPA applies, and in Europe the General Data Protection Regulation., both of which require verifiable parental consent for the use of children's personal data. Much depends on the legal definition of personal data, of course.
I would also urge a child-rights approach to research ethics. For instance, contrary to what many researchers believe, and contrary to companies' T&C, in my research children have told me that they consider Facebook to be public and Twitter to be privacy (cf Nissenbaum's contextual integrity). So my understanding is that this is incorrect below, and that much social media research is improper....
Best, Sonia
-----Original Message----- From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles M. Ess Sent: 18 December 2017 08:58 To: Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com>; air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch
Hi,
one fairly standard approach is to go ahead and conduct your research - though probably with the additional step of setting up a second database that assigns random identifiers to the original accounts / profiles.
Once you have completed your analyses - then the question becomes what you need to include as explicit quotes in the publication / dissemination phase. Typically, these are only a few - i.e., in contrast with 10s if not 100s of thousands (if not more) of texts gathered in. Whereas informed consent is impossible for the latter - it is considerably more feasible for the former. So one possibility is to contact the writers you want to quote and ask for their permission.
Of course, this will not directly address the question as to whether they are minors - and you're exactly right that this is a critical ethical (and, in many jurisdictions, a legal) issue.
At this point, some will argue that this is not your problem - the informants have read (well, at least clicked through) the ToS and that such posts are by a kind of default public and so don't require anything more than acknowledgement (copyright to the author). If a minor is involved, on this view, ethical obligations to vulnerable populations are overridden by a kind of legal coverage ostensibly provided by their agreeing to the ToS.
Others - especially from deontological and ethics of care perspectives - will argue that protection of minors overrides any legal contract established in the ToS. How you directly ascertain the identity of someone on Twitter while asking for their permission to use their quote is, of course, not unproblematic. But these days, it's harder to be a dog unnoticed as a dog on the Internet and so it might be more straightforward than say 10 or certainly 20 years ago.
My 2 cents - good luck and looking forward to the discussion!
- charles
On 18/12/17 07:46, Lior Beserman wrote:
Dear Air-L Community,
I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research?
Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon,
Ph.D. Candidate
The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem _______________________________________________ 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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no
Interesting discussion, thanks. Below, my concern is both with those who wish to use children's tweets and also those who don't necessarily wish this. As regards the latter, my concern is that a general selection of tweets, taken as representing the twitter public in general, will generally include (1) some children identifiable as such, (2) some children not identifiable as such, and (3) adults, identifiable or not. To my mind, this renders collecting tweets ethically problematic insofar as the likely inclusion of some children should be (though generally is not) recognised (unless informed consent is obtained) and empirically problematic to the extent that such inclusion goes unrecognised and (as is also often the case) the researchers infer that they have an adult sample (e.g. by assuming that all tweeters are eligible to vote). Best, Sonia -----Original Message----- From: Charles M. Ess [mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no] Sent: 18 December 2017 10:40 To: Livingstone,S <S.Livingstone@lse.ac.uk>; Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com>; air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch As a small clarification of the clarification ... I took the original post to be headed in the direction of wanting to avoid using material from minors, and that the primary question was then how to to do so. Of course, as Sonia makes exquisitely clear, if the researcher does want to make use of material from minors / children, then a strongly different set of requirements comes into play. Legally and ethically (to my knowledge), informed consent can generally be given by parents or guardians as proxies for the children - but within the boundaries spelled out, e.g., in the documents / frameworks Sonia points to if the research is within the relevant jurisdictions. But however that may be, Sonia's plea for a child-rights approach is (of course) also very helpful - in part as it points to the distinction I mentioned between what may be legally acceptable but what some researchers, especially from deontological (rights-oriented) and/or care ethics perspectives, would consider ethically requisite: namely, whatever the technical and legal aspects - what are the _expectations_ of the persons in play here? There are many, many examples of researchers who, taking the latter perspective(s), have chosen to respect the expectations of privacy held by their informants, even when such expectations are not legally or technically supported. Such respect then includes precisely respect for rights to privacy, and thus would trigger guidelines and practices for protecting those rights for minors. I suspect that Sonia has considerably more than this in mind by a "childs-rights approach to research ethics," but perhaps this is one point of overlap? Will, of course, be eager to see / read / learn of other perspectives and experiences as well. again, many thanks, - c. On 18/12/17 10:59, Charles M. Ess wrote:
perfect - thanks for the most helpful clarification, Sonia! - c.
On 18/12/17 10:35, Livingstone,S wrote:
Children cannot legally consent to use of their personal data, precisely because they are children. Hence in the US COPPA applies, and in Europe the General Data Protection Regulation., both of which require verifiable parental consent for the use of children's personal data. Much depends on the legal definition of personal data, of course.
I would also urge a child-rights approach to research ethics. For instance, contrary to what many researchers believe, and contrary to companies' T&C, in my research children have told me that they consider Facebook to be public and Twitter to be privacy (cf Nissenbaum's contextual integrity). So my understanding is that this is incorrect below, and that much social media research is improper....
Best, Sonia
-----Original Message----- From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles M. Ess Sent: 18 December 2017 08:58 To: Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com>; air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch
Hi,
one fairly standard approach is to go ahead and conduct your research - though probably with the additional step of setting up a second database that assigns random identifiers to the original accounts / profiles.
Once you have completed your analyses - then the question becomes what you need to include as explicit quotes in the publication / dissemination phase. Typically, these are only a few - i.e., in contrast with 10s if not 100s of thousands (if not more) of texts gathered in. Whereas informed consent is impossible for the latter - it is considerably more feasible for the former. So one possibility is to contact the writers you want to quote and ask for their permission.
Of course, this will not directly address the question as to whether they are minors - and you're exactly right that this is a critical ethical (and, in many jurisdictions, a legal) issue.
At this point, some will argue that this is not your problem - the informants have read (well, at least clicked through) the ToS and that such posts are by a kind of default public and so don't require anything more than acknowledgement (copyright to the author). If a minor is involved, on this view, ethical obligations to vulnerable populations are overridden by a kind of legal coverage ostensibly provided by their agreeing to the ToS.
Others - especially from deontological and ethics of care perspectives - will argue that protection of minors overrides any legal contract established in the ToS. How you directly ascertain the identity of someone on Twitter while asking for their permission to use their quote is, of course, not unproblematic. But these days, it's harder to be a dog unnoticed as a dog on the Internet and so it might be more straightforward than say 10 or certainly 20 years ago.
My 2 cents - good luck and looking forward to the discussion!
- charles
On 18/12/17 07:46, Lior Beserman wrote:
Dear Air-L Community,
I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research?
Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon,
Ph.D. Candidate
The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem _______________________________________________ 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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.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/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no
Dear Colleagues, we are just in the middle of a qualitative study on the issue of children's rights in the context of their parents' use of social media, doing extended interviews with children and parents in Germany. I would love to exchange experiences and next year also results with colleagues working on similar issues. Best regards Nadia Am 19. Dezember 2017 18:09:30 MEZ schrieb "Livingstone,S" <S.Livingstone@lse.ac.uk>:
Interesting discussion, thanks.
Below, my concern is both with those who wish to use children's tweets and also those who don't necessarily wish this. As regards the latter, my concern is that a general selection of tweets, taken as representing the twitter public in general, will generally include (1) some children identifiable as such, (2) some children not identifiable as such, and (3) adults, identifiable or not. To my mind, this renders collecting tweets ethically problematic insofar as the likely inclusion of some children should be (though generally is not) recognised (unless informed consent is obtained) and empirically problematic to the extent that such inclusion goes unrecognised and (as is also often the case) the researchers infer that they have an adult sample (e.g. by assuming that all tweeters are eligible to vote).
Best, Sonia
-----Original Message----- From: Charles M. Ess [mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no] Sent: 18 December 2017 10:40 To: Livingstone,S <S.Livingstone@lse.ac.uk>; Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com>; air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch
As a small clarification of the clarification ...
I took the original post to be headed in the direction of wanting to avoid using material from minors, and that the primary question was then how to to do so.
Of course, as Sonia makes exquisitely clear, if the researcher does want to make use of material from minors / children, then a strongly different set of requirements comes into play. Legally and ethically (to my knowledge), informed consent can generally be given by parents or guardians as proxies for the children - but within the boundaries spelled out, e.g., in the documents / frameworks Sonia points to if the research is within the relevant jurisdictions.
But however that may be, Sonia's plea for a child-rights approach is (of course) also very helpful - in part as it points to the distinction I mentioned between what may be legally acceptable but what some researchers, especially from deontological (rights-oriented) and/or care ethics perspectives, would consider ethically requisite: namely, whatever the technical and legal aspects - what are the _expectations_ of the persons in play here? There are many, many examples of researchers who, taking the latter perspective(s), have chosen to respect the expectations of privacy held by their informants, even when such expectations are not legally or technically supported. Such respect then includes precisely respect for rights to privacy, and thus would trigger guidelines and practices for protecting those rights for minors. I suspect that Sonia has considerably more than this in mind by a "childs-rights approach to research ethics," but perhaps this is one point of overlap?
Will, of course, be eager to see / read / learn of other perspectives and experiences as well.
again, many thanks, - c.
On 18/12/17 10:59, Charles M. Ess wrote:
perfect - thanks for the most helpful clarification, Sonia! - c.
On 18/12/17 10:35, Livingstone,S wrote:
Children cannot legally consent to use of their personal data, precisely because they are children. Hence in the US COPPA applies, and in Europe the General Data Protection Regulation., both of which
require verifiable parental consent for the use of children's personal data. Much depends on the legal definition of personal data, of course.
I would also urge a child-rights approach to research ethics. For instance, contrary to what many researchers believe, and contrary to
companies' T&C, in my research children have told me that they consider Facebook to be public and Twitter to be privacy (cf Nissenbaum's contextual integrity). So my understanding is that this is incorrect below, and that much social media research is improper....
Best, Sonia
-----Original Message----- From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles M. Ess Sent: 18 December 2017 08:58 To: Lior Beserman <liorbeserman@gmail.com>; air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch
Hi,
one fairly standard approach is to go ahead and conduct your research - though probably with the additional step of setting up a second database that assigns random identifiers to the original accounts / profiles.
Once you have completed your analyses - then the question becomes what you need to include as explicit quotes in the publication / dissemination phase. Typically, these are only a few - i.e., in contrast with 10s if not 100s of thousands (if not more) of texts gathered in. Whereas informed consent is impossible for the latter - it is considerably more feasible for the former. So one possibility is to
contact the writers you want to quote and ask for their permission.
Of course, this will not directly address the question as to whether
they are minors - and you're exactly right that this is a critical ethical (and, in many jurisdictions, a legal) issue.
At this point, some will argue that this is not your problem - the informants have read (well, at least clicked through) the ToS and that such posts are by a kind of default public and so don't require
anything more than acknowledgement (copyright to the author). If a minor is involved, on this view, ethical obligations to vulnerable populations are overridden by a kind of legal coverage ostensibly provided by their agreeing to the ToS.
Others - especially from deontological and ethics of care perspectives - will argue that protection of minors overrides any legal contract established in the ToS. How you directly ascertain the identity of someone on Twitter while asking for their permission to use their quote is, of course, not unproblematic. But these days, it's harder
to be a dog unnoticed as a dog on the Internet and so it might be more straightforward than say 10 or certainly 20 years ago.
My 2 cents - good luck and looking forward to the discussion!
- charles
On 18/12/17 07:46, Lior Beserman wrote:
Dear Air-L Community,
I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter. I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets. As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people have dealt with this problem in their research?
Thank you, Lior Beserman Navon,
Ph.D. Candidate
The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
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participants (8)
-
Aysenur Ataman -
Charles M. Ess -
Cormac O'Keeffe -
Deen Freelon -
Lior Beserman -
Livingstone,S -
Nadia Kutscher -
Stuart Shulman