Social Media ethics

Social networking sites like Instagram, X (formally Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Tiktok, or Bilibili host tremendous amounts of user-generated data. They are extremely tempting as spaces to gather public perspectives on issues of interest, or to explore different types of behaviours, or to study new forms of media content, sharing, and distribution patterns. They are also interesting as research sites in themselves, having had a substantial impact on social, political, and economic life over the past three decades.

Most intriguingly, they are seemingly easily accessible for researchers. However, social networks are made of human data – humans record the videos, take the photos, write the text, click the links, share the posts. Vanishingly little of the activity on these spaces was produced with the expectation of it being used in academic research. In addition to considerations of research ethics and methodological choices, we must consider that under Australian law, writing, photos, videos and other types of texts can themselves be considered creative works, and therefore their use could be subject to copyright law, or the creator could hold a moral right of attribution. At times, ethical and legal considerations for researchers overlap, and at others, they may contradict, particularly when taking platform Terms and Conditions agreements into account.  

In this workshop, we will unpack some of the key concerns of conducting different types of research using data found on digital platforms through case studies of research practice from different disciplinary domains and drawing on guidelines developed by leading internet researchers.