1. Internet and Research Ethics
Ralph Schroeder
4th July 2016
SDP

2. Overview An introduction to ethics: Kant versus Mill
Context specific examples
Gathering data directly from individuals
Analyzing interaction in virtual environments
Conducting Big Data research
What is new?
Your ethical questions

3. An introduction to ethics
Kant versus Mill
Historical abuses

4. Gathering data directly from individuals
Protection of harm
More difficult to assess
Strategies (make it clear participants can leave, prior rapport with participant, establishing netiquette)
Ensuring anonymity and confidentiality
Perceived anonymity of the Internet
To be considered at all stages of the research

5. Gathering data directly from individuals
Informed consent
Distance between researcher & participant, challenges anonymity strategies, verifying ability to give informed consent
Strategies (readability of documents, use of quizzes, recruitment strategy and verifying identity)
Protected not burdened
When to employ a human subjects model?

6. Analyzing interaction in virtual environments
Focus on graphical online spaces with avatar interaction
Differences in text-only versus voice communication, video- versus virtual, etc.
Contexts of use include online gaming, spaces for socializing and collaborating, training online for offline tasks, experimenting in virtual

7. Research on VEs: Contexts and the role of the researcher
Contact people offline?
Weigh burden on research participant
The online social setting: formally public, but respect the conventions for the privacy of the space?
Be sensitive to context
Disclose researcher identity?
Online possibilities are different from offline (ID tag)
‘Invasion’ of researchers
Respect social milieu

8. Research on VEs: data capture
Tools for capture are more powerful than for capturing offline interactions
Anonymous data about populations, but surveillance?
Reproducing and anonymizing captured interactions, but possible identification by search?

9. Research in online worlds
Maintaining the trust of environments and avatars and the persons ‘behind them’
New possibilities for the study of social interaction in online worlds and VEs
Virtual Milgram as example
A balance of deontological and utilitarian research ethics

11. Virtual and other online environments
Environments for Being There Together (experiments)
Online Networks (online to offline identification, surveillance)
Ethnographic and participant observation
Large-scale data capture, blurring of commercial boundaries
From virtual to real behaviour modification

12. Data and Big Data Data Big data Belongs to object
Comes before analysis
The most divisible, atomizable unit
Big data
Greater scale and scope than previously available for given phenomenon

13. Emotional Contagion Study
Almost 700,000 users, divided into two randomly selected groups
3 million posts and 122 million words were analysed
Users were unaware of contagion and of study
Unexpected result: Positive words in timeline lead to more positive words posted, and vice versa
Kramer A, Guillory J and Hancock J (2014) Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111 (24):

14. Facebook ‘emotional contagion’
Three issues: research ethics, legal, and scientific ‘manipulation’
Research ethics IRB’s apply to academic research
Legal issues are covered by ‘terms of service’
Scientific ‘manipulation’ is a product of big data
Sources:
Kramer, Adam; Guillory, Jamie and Hancock, Jeffrey Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 (24),

15. Ethical and Social Implications
Research ethics, legality, and the larger issue of the increasing power of big data in society
Regulation will ‘only drive research underground’ (research ethicists) - versus more regulation and transparency are needed
Non-replicable findings (compare Google flu trends)

16. Uses and Limits
Social science and scientific uses are limited by data sources
Legal and ethical debates and regulations will continue
Public concern will continue
Populations will be increasingly subject to data analysis, subject to data and regulatory limits
Orwell versus Huxley

17. What is new? Institutional vs. individual responsibility
Challenges in devising a code of practice in a global context
Disciplinary boundaries
Less well known implications
Characteristics of data
Abundance, distance between creator of data and researcher, data as a “commodity”
Differences between ethical and legal provisions

18. On ethical decision-making
“At its most fundamental level, we recognise that ethical decision making interweaves one’s fundamental world view (ontology, epistemology, values, etc), one’s academic and political environment (purposes), one’s defining disciplinary assumptions, and one’s methodological stances. Decision making occurs at many junctures in the cycle of inquiry, including research design, research conduct and research production and dissemination” (AoiR, 2012:3).

19. Key considerations Human subjects vs humanities model of ethics
Sensitivity to context & participants
Private vs public
Ethical standpoints can change throughout the research
Protect - not burden - participants
Take responsibility for ethical and research choices
Do meaningful & high quality research
Write about ethical decision making

20. Your ethical questions........& potential strategies