Internet Research Ethics For The Social Age: New Challenges, Cases, And Contexts

348 Pages·2017·6.647 MB·English

by  Michael Zimmer, Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda

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The continuous evolution of internet and related social media technologies and plat- I
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forms have opened up vast new means for communication, socialization, expression, T
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and collaboration. They also have provided new resources for researchers seeking to R
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explore, observe, and measure human opinions, activities, and interactions. However,
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those using the internet and social media for research—and those tasked with facili-

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tating and monitoring ethical research such as ethical review boards—are confronted E
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with a continuously expanding set of ethical dilemmas. Internet Research Ethics for the E
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Social Age: New Challenges, Cases, and Contexts directly engages with these discus-
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sions and debates, and stimulates new ways to think about—and work towards resolv- C
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ing—the novel ethical dilemmas we face as internet and social media-based research
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continues to evolve. The chapters in this book—from an esteemed collection of global T
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scholars and researchers—offer extensive reflection about current internet research I
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ethics and suggest some important reframings of well-known concepts such as justice, S

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privacy, consent, and research validity, as well as providing concrete case studies and
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emerging research contexts to learn from. R

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MICHAEL ZIMMER (Ph.D., New York University) is Associate Professor in the School of
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Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he also serves as O
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Director of the Center for Information Policy Research. As a privacy and internet ethics I
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scholar, Zimmer has published and provided expert consultation on internet research L

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ethics internationally.
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KATHARINA KINDER-KURLANDA (Ph.D., Lancaster University) is Senior Researcher at
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the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Cologne, Germany. As a cultural an- M
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thropologist with links to computer science, her research covers big data epistemology, R
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social media archiving, security, research ethics, and the internet of things. K
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www.peterlang.com
Internet Research Ethics
for the Social Age
Steve Jones
General Editor

Vol. 108

The Digital Formations series is part of the Peter Lang Media and Communication list.
Every volume is peer reviewed and meets
the highest quality standards for content and production.

PETER LANG
New York  Bern  Frankfurt  Berlin
Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw
Internet Research Ethics
for the Social Age

New Challenges, Cases, and Contexts

Edited by Michael Zimmer
and Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda

PETER LANG
New York  Bern  Frankfurt  Berlin
Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Zimmer, Michael, editor. | Kinder-Kurlanda, Katharina, editor.
Title: Internet research ethics for the social age: new challenges, cases, and contexts /
edited by Michael Zimmer and Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda.
Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2017.
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017015655 | ISBN 978-1-4331-4266-6 (paperback: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4331-4267-3 (hardcover: alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4268-0 (ebook pdf)
ISBN 978-1-4331-4269-7 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4270-3 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Internet research—Moral and ethical aspects.
Classification: LCC ZA4228 .I59 2017 | DDC 174/.90014—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015655
DOI 10.3726/b11077

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

© 2017 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
www.peterlang.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) United States License.
Table Contents
of
Foreword: Grounding Internet Research Ethics 3.0: A View from (the) AoIR ....... ix
Charles Ess
Introductory Material ........................................................xvii
Introduction ...................................................................xix
Michael Zimmer and Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda
Internet Research Ethics: Twenty Years Later ...................................xxix
Elizabeth Buchanan
Part One: Challenges ...........................................................1
Conceptual Challenges
Chapter One: Recasting Justice for Internet and Online Industry
Research Ethics ..............................................................3
Anna Lauren Hoffmann and Anne Jonas
Reaction by Céline Ehrwein Nihan ......................................... 19
Chapter Two: A Feminist Perspective on Ethical Digital Methods ................ 21
Mary Elizabeth Luka, Mélanie Millette, and Jacqueline Wallace
Reaction by Annette N. Markham .......................................... 37
vi | table of contents
Chapter Three: Sorting Things Out Ethically: Privacy as a Research
Issue beyond the Individual ............................................... 39
Tobias Matzner and Carsten Ochs
Reaction by Céline Ehrwein Nihan ......................................... 53
Reaction by Christian Pentzold ............................................ 54
Reaction by D. E. Wittkower ................................................ 55
Chapter Four: Chasing ISIS: Network Power, Distributed Ethics
and Responsible Social Media Research ................................... 57
Jonathon Hutchinson, Fiona Martin, and Aim Sinpeng
Reaction by Katleen Gabriels .............................................. 72
Reaction by Christian Pentzold ............................................ 73
Data Challenges
Chapter Five: Lost Umbrellas: Bias and the Right to Be Forgotten
in Social Media Research .................................................. 75
Rebekah Tromble and Daniela Stockmann
Reaction by Zoetanya Sujon ............................................... 92
Reaction by Arvind Narayanan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Chapter Six: Bad Judgment, Bad Ethics? Validity in Computational
Social Media Research ..................................................... 95
Cornelius Puschmann
Reaction by Nicholas Proferes ............................................114
Chapter Seven: To Share or Not to Share? Ethical Challenges
in Sharing Social Media-based Research Data .............................115
Katrin Weller and Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda
Reaction by Alex Halavais. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Reaction by Bonnie Tijerina ...............................................131
Applied Challenges
Chapter Eight: “We Tend to Err on the Side of Caution”: Ethical
Challenges Facing Canadian Research Ethics Boards When
Overseeing Internet Research ............................................133
Yukari Seko and Stephen P. Lewis
Reaction by Michelle C. Forelle and Sarah Myers West .....................148
Reaction by Katleen Gabriels .............................................149
Chapter Nine: Internet Research Ethics in a Non-Western Context .............151
Soraj Hongladarom
Reaction by Zoetanya Sujon ..............................................164
table of contents | vii
Part Two: Cases ..............................................................165
Chapter Ten: Living Labs – An Ethical Challenge for Researchers
and Platform Operators ..................................................167
Philipp Schaer
Chapter Eleven: Ethics of Using Online Commercial Crowdsourcing
Sites for Academic Research: The Case of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk ......177
Matthew Pittman and Kim Sheehan
Chapter Twelve: Museum Ethnography in the Digital Age:
Ethical Considerations ....................................................187
Natalia Grincheva
Chapter Thirteen: Participant Anonymity and Participant Observations:
Situating the Researcher within Digital Ethnography ......................195
James Robson
Chapter Fourteen: The Social Age of “It’s Not a Private Problem”:
Case Study of Ethical and Privacy Concerns in a Digital Ethnography
of South Asian Blogs against Intimate Partner Violence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Ishani Mukherjee
Chapter Fifteen: Studying Closed Communities On-line: Digital Methods
and Ethical Considerations beyond Informed Consent and Anonymity ......213
Ylva Hård af Segerstad, Dick Kasperowski, Christopher Kullenberg
and Christine Howes
Chapter Sixteen: An Ethical Inquiry into Youth Suicide Prevention
Using Social Media Mining ...............................................227
Amaia Eskisabel-Azpiazu, Rebeca Cerezo-Menéndez,
and Daniel Gayo-Avello
Chapter Seventeen: Death, Affect and the Ethical Challenges
of Outing a Griefsquatter .................................................235
Lisbeth Klastrup
Chapter Eighteen: Locating Locational Data in Mobile and Social Media .......245
Lee Humphreys
Chapter Nineteen: How Does It Feel to Be Visualized?:
Redistributing Ethics .....................................................255
David Moats and Jessamy Perriam
Part Three: Contexts ........................................................267
Chapter Twenty: Negotiating Consent, Compensation, and Privacy
in Internet Research: PatientsLikeMe.com as a Case Study .................269
Robert Douglas Ferguson
viii | table of contents
Chapter Twenty-One: The Ethics of Using Hacked Data: Patreon’s
Data Hack and Academic Data Standards .................................277
Nathaniel Poor
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Ethics of Sensory Ethnography: Virtual
Reality Fieldwork in Zones of Conflict .....................................281
Jeff Shuter and Benjamin Burroughs
Chapter Twenty-Three: Images of Faces Gleaned from Social Media in
Social Psychological Research on Sexual Orientation ......................287
Patrick Sweeney
Chapter Twenty-Four: Twitter Research in the Disaster Context – Ethical
Concerns for Working with Historical Datasets ............................293
Martina Wengenmeir
Epilogue: Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age ..........................299
Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda and Michael Zimmer
Contributor Biographies ......................................................307