Reflections on the changing role of researcher, participants and the research user in social media research and the implications for research ethics

1. Blurring boundaries - researchers, participants
and research users in social media research
Dr Sarah Quinton, Oxford Brookes University
sequinton@brookes.ac.uk
Ethical issues in social media research: current thinking
15th May 2018
King’s College London

2. My hats and research ethics

3. • Challenges in maintaining boundaries (Dickson-Swift et
al., 2006)
• Multiple issues in entering people’s lives for research
(Charmaz, 2002)
• The embedded researcher (Lewis & Russell, 2011)
• Use of technologies as extension of self (Belk, 2013)
• Research norms not yet established
• Evolution of socio-technological behaviour changes
• Crowdsourcing of research (Brawley & Pury, 2016)
(Digital) Ethnographic issues in research

4. Blurring in social media research
• The role of the
researcher/participant and
research user
• Power shifts
• Accessible data but should
it be accessed?
• Removal of
temporal/spatial
boundaries
• Multi-layering of different
social media data types
• Human/non-human data

5. Ethical blurring - relationships
• Participant no longer ‘object’
from whom researcher
obtains data
• Researcher no longer master
of all he/she surveys
• Consideration of research
user?
• Redistribution of research
(Marres, 2012)
• Complexity thus requires
further demonstration of
respect

6. Heightened researcher responsibility in
social media research relationships
• Blurring of past and
present self
• Individual/group
boundary blurring
• Inter-participant
research data sharing
• Digital and non digital
identities/boundaries
Participant
‘management’ harder

7. Ethical blurring -informed consent
• Removal of temporal and or
spatial boundaries creates
challenges for consent
• Archived data?
• Who should consent?
• Timing of consent?
• Passive data collection?
• Is consent
realistic/feasible/desirable?

8. Ethical blurring –research data and
authorship/ownership
• Individual/group or
organisational ownership
• who gives consent?
• Authorship or contribution or
augmented or edited content
• who gives consent?
• Platform T and Cs
• Media type
• Research output

9. Ethical blurring –
co-production/creation and digital labour
• Digital labour including
‘mechanical turk’ platform
type
• Consenting participants?
• Ethical governance of
crowdsourcing research
platforms
• Should the research
community review its use of
these platforms?

10. Ethical responsibility to research
users
• Researcher holds ethical
responsibility for fairness and
accuracy of results/insight
• Existing lack of transparency in
how results reached
• Enhances belief of smoke and
mirrors in research practices
• Negative impact on
perception of reliability and
trustworthiness
• Users’ rights to question
methods?

11. Re-focusing

12. How sensitive is the research and who will it impact?
What is the level of participant vulnerability?
How can third party data be evaluated?
If new data formats are critical to the research then…
Does participant anonymity require additional
consideration?
Where does the researcher’s responsibility lie?
Has awareness of risk to self and others been
considered?
Specific ethics questions for social media
to enhance research integrity and help build trust in
research relationships