Ethical and legal aspects of social media data usage
This paper discusses the ethical and legal usage of social networking data (for instance, Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter, YouTube and other websites) enabled to answer vital research questions, generating economic, political and social forecasts, as well as understanding other processes. It aims to analyze the ethical and legal consequences of data misuse which took place in research practice and offers steps to prevent ethical and legal barriers that might arise while working with social networking data. The paper poses the following research tasks: 1) to describe the current state of ethical and legal aspects of social networking data usage taking into account existing Russian and international research; 2) to identify the circle of ethical and legal concerns that might emerge while working with social networking data; 3) to provide recommendations aimed at preventing ethical and legal misuse of such data. As it is shown in the paper, the main issue with the usage of such data is that it undermines the main ethical principle - voluntary participation in research. In addition, the tempting openness of social networking data can encourage the infringement of privacy rights, threaten personal data protection and harm the mental health of users. In spite of all efforts countries put to handle legal questions related to the usage of Big Data, current practice shows that possibilities developed by Big Data undermine principles of law and make people's right to privacy and such data incompatible. In the paper, the author suggests the following steps aimed at preventing ethical and legal violations of social media data usage: 1) to reconsider and adapt to social media environment such concepts as personal data, informed consent, ability of people to opt in and out of an experiment; 2) to develop detailed regulations of preliminary ethical and legal expertise of research proposals with social networking data and monitor results of ongoing research to prevent potential harm which might be caused by the usage of such data; 3) to develop a course (face-to-face or online) on research ethics with modules on Big Data usage for students, researchers and people who can be potentially involved in any research field.
Keywords
legal aspects,
ethical aspects,
personal data,
social networking data,
social media,
Big Data,
правовые аспекты,
этические аспекты,
персональные данные,
данные из соцсетей,
социальные медиа,
большие данные (Big data)Authors
| Shcheglova Irina A. | Higher School of Economics | ishcheglova@hse.ru; sheglova.i@mail.ru |
Всего: 1
References
О персональных данных : Федеральный закон РФ. URL: http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_61801/ (дата обращения: 13.07.2017).
Van Alsenoy B., Verdoodt V., Heyman R., Ausloos J., Wauters E. From social media service to advertising network: a critical analysis of Face-book's Revised Policies and Terms. 2015. URL: https://www.law.kuleuven.be/citip/en/news/item/facebooks-revised-policies-and-terms-v1-1.pdf. (access date: 20.12.2017).
In re: Facebook (Psychological Study). EPIC, 2014. URL: https://epic.org/privacy/internet/ftc/facebook/psycho/ (access date: 17.07.2017).
Lomas N. Facebook's Data Protection Practices Under Fresh Fire In Europe // TechCrunch. 2015. URL: https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/23/facebook-ad-network/ (access date: 2.01.2018).
The Belmont Report. URL: https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/index.html (access date: 10.07.2017).
Kaiser T. Harvard Sociologists in Hot Water Over Facebook Study; Student Privacy Called into Question // Dailytech. 2011. URL: http://www.dailytech.com/Harvard+Sociologists+in+Hot+Water+Over+Facebook+Study+Student+Privacy+Called+into+Question/article22116. htm (access date: 04.01.2018).
Parry M. Harvard Researchers Accused of Breaching Students' Privacy // The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2011. URL: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Harvards-Privacy-Meltdown/128166 (access date: 05.01.2018).
Lewis K., Kaufman J., Gonzalez M., Wimmer A., Christakis N. Tastes, Ties, and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.Com // Social Networks. 2008. No. 30 (4). P. 330-342.
Barbier G., Liu H. Data Mining in Social Media // Aggarwal C. (eds) Social Network Data Analytics. Boston, MA : Springer, 2011.
Hogan B. Analyzing Social Networks via the Internet // The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods Nigel Fielding / R.M. Lee & Grant Blank (eds). 2008.
Israel M., Hay I. Research Ethics for Social Scientists: Between Ethical Conduct and Regulatory Compliance. London : Sage, 2006.
Norval C., Henderson T. Contextual Consent: Ethical Mining of Social Media for Health Research // Proceedings of the WSDM 2017, Workshop on Mining Online Health Reports. Cambridge, 2017.
Facebook's 'experiment' was socially irresponsible // Guardian. 2014. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/01/facebook-socially-irresponsible (access date: 17.07.2017).
Zimmer M. But the data is already public: on the ethics of research in Facebook // Ethics and Information Technology. 2010. № 12. P. 313-325.
Kramera A.D., Guillory J.E., Hancock J.T. Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks // PNAS. 2014. № 111 (24). P. 8788-8790.
Hall T., Flynn V. Ethical issues in software engineering research: a survey of current practice // Empirical Software Engineering. 2001. Vol. 6. P. 305-317.
Савельев А.И. Проблемы применения законодательства о персональных данных в эпоху «Больших данных» (Big Data) // Право. Журнал Высшей школы экономики. 2015. № 1. С. 43-66.
Yang Z., Wilson C., Wang X., Gao T., Zhao, B. Y., Dai Y. Uncovering social network Sybils in the wild // Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM conference on Internet measurement conference. New York, NY : ACM Press, 2011.
Kosinski M., Matz S., Gosling S., Popov V., Stillwell D. Facebook as a Social Science Research Tool: Opportunities, Challenges, Ethical Considerations and Practical Guidelines // American Psychologist. 2015.
Коршунов А., Белобородов И., Бузун Н., Аванесов В., Пастухов Р., Чихрадзе К., Козлов И., Гомзин А., Андрианов И., Сысоев А., Ипа-тов С., Филоненко И., Чуприна К., Турдаков Д., Кузнецов С. Анализ социальных сетей: методы и приложения // Труды Института системного программирования РАН. 2014. Т. 26, вып. 1. С. 439-456.
Han M. Social media poll predicts narrow "No" win in same-sex marriage survey // Financial Review. 2017. URL: http://www.afr.com/news/politics/social-media-poll-predicts-narrow-no-win-in-samesex-marriage-survey-20171101-gzd6rv (access date: 04.01.2018).
Lubin G. The Incredible Story of How Target Exposed A Teen Girl's Pregnancy. 2012. URL: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-how-target-exposed-a-teen-girls-pregnancy-2012-2 (access date: 04.01.2018).
Tuffley D., Stantic B. Social media study points to a close result in the same-sex marriage vote // The conversation. 2017. URL: https://theconversation.com/social-media-study-points-to-a-close-result-in-the-same-sex-marriage-vote-84436 (access date: 05.01.2018).
Celli F., Stepanov E., Poesio M., Riccardi G. Predicting Brexit: Classifying Agreement is Better than Sentiment and Pollsters // Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Modeling of People's Opinions, Personality, and Emotions in Social Media. Osaka, Japan, December, 2016. P. 110-118.
Ceron A., Curini L., Iacus S. How pollsters could use social media data to improve election forecasts // The Washington Post. 2016. URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/21/using-these-4-steps-pollsters-could-use-social-media-data-to-improve-election-forecasts/?utm_term=.a9d5a334b373 (access date: 05.01.2018).
Li J., Cardie C. Early Stage Influenza Detection from Twitter // arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.7340. 2013.
Шалак В. Potus 2016. URL: http://vaal.ru/show.php?id=281 (дата обращения: 05.01.2018).
Perez S. Analysis of social media did a better job at predicting Trump's win than the polls // Techcrunch. 2016. URL: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/10/social-media-did-a-better-job-at-predicting-trumps-win-than-the-polls/ (access date: 05.01.2018).
Reece A.G., Danforth C.M. Instagram photos reveal predictive markers of depression // 6:15. 2016.
Conway M., O'Connor D. Social media, big data, and mental health: current advances and ethical implications // Current Opinion in Psychology. 2016. Vol. 9. P. 77-82.
Moreno M.A., Jelenchick L.A., Egan K.G., Cox E., Young H., Gannon K.E., Becker T. Feeling bad on Facebook: depression disclosures by college students on a social networking site // Depression and Anxiety. 2011. Vol. 28. P. 447-455.
Xun J, Guo B. Twitter as customer's eWOM: an empirical study on their impact on firm financial performance // Internet Research. 2017. Vol. 27 (5). P. 1014-1038.
Brynjolfsson E., Hitt L., Kim H. Strength in Numbers: How does data-driven decision-making affect firm performance? // ICIS 2011 Proceedings. 2011. URL: https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2011/proceedings/economicvalueIS/13 (access date: 20.12.2017).
Martin K.E. Ethical Issues in the Big Data Industry // MIS Quarterly Executive. 2015. № 14 (2). P. 67-85.
Calo M.R. Digital Market Manipulation // The George Washington Law Review. 2013. Vol. 82 (4). P. 995-1051.
Schroeder R. Big Data and the brave new world of social media research // Big Data and Society. 2014. № 1 (2). P. 1-11.
Lazer D., Pentland A., Adamic L.A., Aral S., Barabasi A.-L., Brewer D. Van Alstyne M. Life in the network: the coming age of computational social science // Science. 2009. Vol. 323. P. 721-723.
Kosinski M., Stillwell D., Graepel T. Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior // Proceedings of the Na tional Academy of Sciences (PNAS). 2013.
Duhigg C. The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. New York : Random House, 2012.
Youyoua W., Kosinski M., Stillwell D. Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans // PNAS. 2015. № 112 (4). P. 1036-1040.
Майер-Шенбергер В., Кукьер К. Большие данные. Революция, которая изменит то, как мы живем, работаем и мыслим / пер. с англ. Инны Гайдюк. М. : Манн, Иванов и Фербер, 2014. 240 с.
Корытникова Н.В. Online Big Data как источник аналитической информации в онлайн исследованиях // Социологические исследования. 2015. № 8. С. 14-24.
Key facts about Facebook. URL: http://newsroom.fb.com/key-facts (дата обращения: 05.01.2018).
Онлайн исследования в России 2.0 : сб. ст. / под ред. А.В. Шашкина, И.Ф. Девятко, С.Г. Давыдова. М. : Северо-Восток, 2010.
Brand Analytics. Социальные сети в России, зима 2015-2016. Цифры, тренды, прогнозы. URL: https://blog.br-analytics.ru/socialnye-seti-vrossii-zima-2015-2016-cifry-trendy-prognozy/(дата обращения: 25.12.2017).
Kemp S. Digital in 2017 Global Overview. URL: https://hootsuite.com/de/newsroom/press-releases/digital-in-2017-report (access date: 25.12.2017).
