Ethics for Studying Online Sociotechnical Systems in a Big Data World

ABSTRACT

The evolution of social technology and research methods present ongoing challenges to studying people online. Recent high-profile cases have prompted discussion among both the research community and the general public about the ethical implications of researching humans, their information, and their activities in large-scale digital contexts. Examples of scientific and market research involving Facebook users and OKCupid clients exemplify the ethical complexities of both studying and manipulating online user behavior. When does data science become human subjects research, and what are our obligations to these subjects as researchers' Drawing from previous work around the ethics of digital research, one goal of this workshop is to work towards a set of guiding principles for CSCW scholars doing research online.

References

1. Anderson, M. OKCupid, Facebook Not Alone in Studying Consumers. ABC News, (2014). http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/okcupid-facebook-studying-consumers-24762549
2. Beaulieu, A. and Estallea, A. Rethinking research ethics for mediated settings. Information, Communication and Society, 15(1) (2012), 23--42.
3. Boellstorff, T., Nardi, B., Pearce, C., and Taylor, T. L. Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method. Princeton University Press, 2012.
4. Branham, S. M., Thieme, A., Nathan, L. P., Harrison, S., Tatar, D., and Olivier, P. Co-creating & Identity-making in CSCW: Revisiting Ethics in Design Research. Proceedings of the Companion Publication of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, ACM (2014), 305--308.
5. Bromseth, J. C. H. Public places - public activities? Methodological approaches and ethical dilemmas in research on computer-mediated communication contexts. In A. Morrison (Ed.), Researching ICTs in Context (pp. 33--61). Inter/Media Report 3/2002. University of Oslo, 2002.
6. Bruckman, A. Studying the amateur artist: A perspective on disguising data collected in human subjects on the Internet. Ethics and Information Technology, 4 (2002), 217--231.
7. Bruckman, A. Karahalios, K., Kraut, R. E., Poole, E., Thomas, J. C., and Yardi. Revisiting research ethics in the Facebook Era: Challenging in Emerging CSCW Research. CSCW'10 Workshop, (2010).
8. Buchanan, E., & Ess. C. Internet research ethics and the Institutional Review Board: Current practices and issues. Computers and Society 39 (2009), 43--49.
9. Ess, C. Digital Media Ethics. Polity, 2009.
10. Hudson, J. M. and Bruckman, A. "Go Away": Participant Objections to Being Studied and the Ethics of Chatroom Research. The Information Society 20, 2 (2004), 127--139.
11. Kadushin, C. Who benefits from network analysis: ethics of social network research. Social Networks 27, 2 (2005), 139--153.
12. Klemmer, R. S., Thomsen, M., Phelps-Goodman, E., Lee, R. and Landay, J. A. Where do web sites come from? Capturing and interacting with design history. In Proc. CHI 2002, ACM Press (2002), 1--8.
13. Kramer, A. D. I., Guillory, J. E. and Hancock, J. T. Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(24) (2014), 8788--8790.
14. Kraut, R., Olsen, J., Banaji, M., Bruckman, A., Cohen, J., and Couper, M. Psychological Research Online: Report of Board of Scientific Affairs' Advisory Group on the Conduct of Research on the Internet. American Psychologist, 59 (2) (2004), 105--117.
15. Markham, A. Fabrication as ethical practice: Qualitative inquiry in ambiguous internet contexts. Information, Communication, and Society, 5(3) (2012), 334--353.
16. Markham, C. and Buchanan, E. Ethical decision-making and Internet research: Recommendations from the aoir ethics working committee v2.0. Idea Group Publishing, 2002.
17. Mather, B. D. Making up titles for conference papers. Ext. Abstracts CHI 2000, ACM Press (2000), 1--2.
18. Rudder, C. We Experiment On Human Beings! OkTrends: Dating research from OKCupid, (2014). http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/we-experiment-on-human-beings/.
19. Zimmer, M. But the data is already public: On the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics & Information Technology, 12(4) (2010), 313--325.

Index Terms

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Computing profession

      • Codes of ethics