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Saturday, September 15, 2018

Social Science One And How Top Journals View The Ethics Of Facebook Data Research

Kalev Leetaru
Forbes.com
Originally posted on August 13, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

At the same time, Social Science One’s decision to leave all ethical questions TBD and to eliminate the right to informed consent or the ability to opt out of research fundamentally redefines what it means to conduct research in the digital era, normalizing the removal of these once sacred ethical tenets. Given the refusal of one of its committee members to provide replication data for his own study and the statement by another committee member that “I have articulated the argument that ToS are not, and should not be considered, ironclad rules binding the activities of academic researchers. … I don't think researchers should reasonably be expected to adhere to such conditions, especially at a time when officially sanctioned options for collecting social media data are disappearing left and right,” the result is an ethically murky landscape in which it is unclear just where Social Science One draws the line at what it will or will not permit.

Given Facebook’s new focus on “privacy first” I asked the company whether it would commit to offering its two billion users a new profile setting allowing them to opt out of having their data made available to academic researchers such as Social Science One. As it has repeatedly done in the past, the company declined to comment.

The info is here.