Salient Features of India constitution especially power and functions
Research Ethics in the 2.0 Era
1.
Research Ethics in the 2.0 Era:
Conceptual Gaps for Ethicists, Researchers, IRBs
PRIM&R Plenary Panel
“Would Margaret Mead Have Blogged?
How Social Media has Changed Research”
December 2, 2011
Michael Zimmer, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies
Co-Director, Center for Information Policy Research
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
zimmerm@uwm.edu
www.michaelzimmer.org
2. Agenda
What are the Ethical Issues related to
Internet Research?
Selected cases
Conceptual gaps
Closing the gaps for researchers & IRBs
3. Ethical Concerns
The growing use of internet tools, platforms
& environments in research creates
conceptual gaps in our current understanding
of / approaches to key ethical issues:
Privacy
Anonymity vs. Identifiability
Consent
Harm & Human subjects
Honesty & Research integrity
4. Illuminating Cases
1. Sensitive blogs & confidentiality
2. Research on Tor network
3. Harvesting & archiving of “public” Twitter
streams
4. Pete Warden’s harvesting (and proposed
release) of public Facebook profiles
5. Tastes, Ties, and Time (T3) Facebook data
release
5. Sensitive Blogs & Confidentiality
Research on personal health blogs
Content analysis of 40-50 blogs
Online interview with 10 bloggers
Subjects will choose their own
pseudonym, but researcher plans to use real
name of blogs and URL
Must subjects consent to use of real blog
name, even if publicly visible?
Could pseudonyms be linked back to blogs?
6. Research on Tor Network
Computer science researchers increasingly
interested in network traffic on the Tor
anonymity network
What kind of traffic is on this network?
What kind of users?
Or, just capture Tor data as convenience sample
But users of Tor are intentionally seeking
additional privacy and anonymity
Often not even vetted by IRBs
Soghoain, C. (2011) “Enforced Community Standards For Research on Users of the Tor Anonymity Network”
7. Harvesting Public Twitter Streams
Is it ethical for researchers to follow and
systematically capture public Twitter streams
without first obtaining specific, informed
consent by the subjects?
Are tweets publications (texts), or utterances?
What are users’ expectations to how their
tweets are being found & used?
What if a user later changes her privacy settings,
or deletes tweets, etc
http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/02/12/is-it-ethical-to-harvest-public-twitter-accounts-without-consent/
8. LOC Archiving of Public Tweets
Library of Congress will archive all public tweets
6 month delay, restricted access to researchers only
Open questions:
Can users opt-out from being in permanent archive?
Can users delete tweets from archive?
Will geolocational and other profile data be
included?
What about a public tweet that is re-tweeting a
private one?
Did users ever expect their tweets to become
permanent part of LOC’s archives?
http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/04/14/open-questions-about-library-of-congress-archiving-twitter-streams/
9. Pete Warden Facebook Dataset
Exploited flaw in Facebook’s architecture to
access and harvest publicly-viewable profile
information of 215 million users
http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/02/how-to-split-up-the-us.html
10. Pete Warden Facebook Dataset
Planned to release entire dataset – with all
personal information intact – to academic
community
Would it be acceptable to use this dataset?
Users knew (?) data was public, but did they
expect it to be harvested by
bots, aggregated, and made available as raw
data?
Under threat of lawsuit from
Facebook, Warden destroyed the data
http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/02/12/why-pete-warden-should-not-release-profile-data-on-215-million-facebook-users/
11. T3 Facebook Project
Harvard-based Tastes, Ties, and Time (T3)
research project sought to understand social
network dynamics of large groups of students
Worked with Facebook & an “anonymous”
university to harvest the Facebook profiles of an
entire cohort of college freshmen
Repeated each year for their 4-year tenure
Co-mingled with other University data
(housing, major, etc)
Coded for race, gender, political views, cultural
tastes, etc
Zimmer, M. 2010. “But the data is already public”: On the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics & Information Technology.
12. T3 Data Release
As an NSF-funded project, the dataset was
made publicly available
First phase released September 25, 2008
One year of data (n=1,640)
Prospective users must submit application to
gain access to dataset
Detailed codebook available for anyone to access
Zimmer, M. 2010. “But the data is already public”: On the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics & Information Technology.
13. “Anonymity” of the T3 Dataset
“All the data is cleaned so you can’t connect
anyone to an identity”
But dataset had unique cases (based on
codebook)
If we could identify the source university,
individuals could potentially be identified
Took me minimal effort to discern the source was
Harvard
The anonymity (and privacy) of subjects in the
study might be in jeopardy….
Zimmer, M. 2010. “But the data is already public”: On the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics & Information Technology.
14. Good-Faith Efforts to Protect Subject
Privacy
1. Only those data that were accessible by default
by each RA were collected
2. Removing/encoding of “identifying” information
3. Tastes & interests (“cultural footprints”) will only
be released after “substantial delay”
4. To download, must agree to “Terms and
Conditions of Use” statement
5. Reviewed & approved by Harvard’s IRB
Zimmer, M. 2010. “But the data is already public”: On the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics & Information Technology.
16. Illuminating Cases
1. Sensitive blogs & confidentiality
2. Research on Tor network
3. Harvesting & archiving of “public” Twitter
streams
4. Pete Warden’s harvesting (and proposed
release) of public Facebook profiles
5. Tastes, Ties, and Time (T3) Facebook data
release
What conceptual gaps about research ethics emerge?
17. Ethical Concerns
The growing use of internet tools, platforms
& environments in research creates
conceptual gaps in our current understanding
of / approaches to key ethical issues:
Privacy
Anonymity vs. Identifiability
Consent
Harm & Human subjects
Honesty & Research integrity
18. Conceptual Gap: Privacy
Presumption that because subjects make information
available on a blog, Facebook, or Twitter, they don’t
have an expectation of privacy
Researchers/IRBs might assume everything is always
public, and was meant to be
Assumes no harm could come to subjects if data is
already “public”
New ethical problems…
Ignores contextual nature of sharing
Fails to recognize the strict dichotomy of public/private
doesn’t apply in the 2.0 world
Need to track if ToS/architecture have changed, or if
users even understand what is available to researchers
Nissenbaum, H. 2011. “Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life”
19. Conceptual Gap: Anonymity vs.
Identifiability
Presumption that stripping names & other
obvious identifiers provides sufficient anonymity
Assumes only PII allows re-identification
New ethical problems…
Ignores how anything can potentially identifiable
information and become the “missing link” to re-
identify an entire dataset
“Anonymous” datasets are not achievable and
provides false sense of protection
But how can we share data safely?
Ohm, P. “Broken promises of privacy: Responding to the surprising failure of anonymization.” UCLA Law Review
20. Conceptual Gap: Consent
Presumption that because something is shared
or available without a password, the subject is
consenting to it being harvested for research
Assumes no harm can come from use of data already
shared with friends or other contextually-bound
circles
New ethical problems…
Must recognize that a user making something public
online comes with a set of
assumptions/expectations about who can access
and how
Does anything outside this need specific consent?
Must recognize how research methods might allow
un-anticipated access to “restricted” data
21. Conceptual Gap: Harm
Presumption that “harm” means risk of physical or
tangible impact on subject
Researchers often imply “data is already public, so what
harm could possibly happen”
New ethical problems
Must move beyond the concept of harm as requiring a
tangible consequence
Protecting from harm is more than protecting from
hackers, spammers, identity thieves, etc
Consider dignity/autonomy theories of harm
Must a “wrong” occur for there to be damage to the
subject?
Do subjects deserve control over the use of their data
streams?
22. Conceptual Gap: Human Subjects
Researchers (esp. CompSci) often interact only
with datasets, objects, or avatars, thus feel a
conceptual distance from an actual human
Often don’t consider what they do as “human
subject” research
New ethical problems
Must bridge this (artificial) distance between
researcher and the actual human subject
Also consider other stakeholders within the complex
arrangement of information intermediaries
Carpenter, K & Dittrich, D. “Bridging the Distance: Removing the Technology Buffer and Seeking Consistent Ethical
Analysis in Computer Security Research”
23. Conceptual Gap: Honesty & Integrity
Presumption that we must never falsify research
data
Tends to privilege positivist, quantitative research
Presumes any sensitive data can easily be scrubbed
without impacting results
New ethical problems…
Scrubbing data completely can destroy valuable
research results, yet concerns of privacy and
identifiability persist
Need to consider the ethics of fabrication
Composite profiles, constructed quotes, fuzzy
data
Markham, A. “Fabrication as Ethical Practice: Qualitative Inquiry in Ambiguous Internet Contexts”
24. Ethical Concerns
The growing use of internet tools, platforms
& environments in research creates
conceptual gaps in our current understanding
of / approaches to key ethical issues:
Privacy
Anonymity vs. Identifiability
Consent
Harm & Human subjects
Honesty & Research integrity
25. Conceptual Gaps Policy Vacuums
Researchers & IRBs are trying to do the right thing
when faced with research projects relying on Internet
tools and spaces
But the fluidity and complexity of Internet tools and
environments creates significant conceptual gaps
Leaving researchers & IRBs with considerable policy
vacuums
How should researchers deal with using Internet tools in
their projects?
How should IRBs review them?
And how can we still ensure research still gets done…
26. Removing the gaps, filling the vacuums
Scholarship
Buchanan & Ess studying how IRBs deal with
Internet research
Exploring new dimensions of Internet research
ethics by Markham; Soghoian; Carpenter & Dittrich;
and others (cited within)
Resources
“Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Resource
Center and Commons”
http://www.InternetResearchEthics.org
“Ethical decision-making and Internet research:
Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working
Committee”
27. Removing the gaps, filling the vacuums
Education & outreach
Growing focus at PRIM&R and related events
Engage disciplinary conferences (ACM, ICA, etc)
Policy guidance
Advising SACHRP on “The Internet in Human
Subjects Research”
Require Internet Research Ethics training for
all IRBs?
28.
Research Ethics in the 2.0 Era:
Conceptual Gaps for Ethicists, Researchers, IRBs
PRIM&R Plenary Panel
“Would Margaret Mead Have Blogged?
How Social Media has Changed Research”
December 2, 2011
Michael Zimmer, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies
Co-Director, Center for Information Policy Research
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
zimmerm@uwm.edu
www.michaelzimmer.org