New ethical guidelines for Social Media Research published

Hayley Lepps is a Researcher at NatCen Social Research

Earlier in the year I was invited to attend a two-day workshop hosted by the University of Aberdeen, as part of their ESRC‐funded project “Social Media, Privacy and Risk: Towards More Ethical Research Methodologies”. 

The workshop was attended by some of the leading thinkers & practitioners in social media research, and based on our experiences and research (including my own work on NatCen's “Research using Social Media: Users’ Views” project), we aimed to develop a set of flexible guidelines for the ethical use of social media data in research, intended to be used by researchers, students, ethics committees, funding bodies, and anyone else with an interest in the ethics of working with social media data. Following the workshop, the outputs were then pulled together by the team at Aberdeen, and the draft guidelines were discussed at the AcSS/ NSMNSS conference on ethics and social media research. 

I was very happy to see the guidelines published last week; I would very much recommend anyone interested in conducting ethical social media research gives them a read, and I hope they provide a useful contribution to ongoing debates and best practice in ethical social media research in the social sciences. You can find the final version of the guidelines here: www.dotrural.ac.uk/socialmediaresearchethics.pdf

Ethics & Social Media Research Conference - Full programme

The full programme for our Ethics & Social Media Conference has now been announced. You can see details of session abstracts here, and register for the conference on eventbrite

1000 Conference Registration and Coffee 

1030 Keynote 1
The Ethical Disruptions of Social Media Research: tales from the field 
Professor Susan Halford (Director Web Science Institute, University of Southampton)

1130 Parallel Session 1
Session A: Ethical Practicalities (I) 

• Using Twitter as a data source: An overview of ethical challenges. Wasim Ahmed (University of Sheffield) 
• Ethical issues in qualitative research on Facebook. Gill Mooney (University of Leeds) 
• The Ethics of Researching Tinder. Jenna Condie (Western Sydney University) 

Session B: Blurred Lines

• Trying to re-focus the blurred lines between researchers and participants in social media research. Sarah Quinton (Oxford Brookes) 
• Reconciling the Tumblr Fangirl and the Academic: Embracing the Blurred line Between Participant and Observer in Online Ethnography. Kadian Pow (Birmingham City University) 
• Things that keep me awake at night. Milena Popova (UWE) 

Session C: Workshop Session

• Social Media Research Ethics: Sharing Best Practice Prof. Claire Wallace and Dr. Leanne Townsend (University of Aberdeen). 

1300 Lunch 

1400 Parallel Session 2
Session D: Critical Ethical Reflections 

• Sharing social media data – challenges and emerging solutions. Libby Bishop (UK Data Archive, University of Essex) 
• Public vs Private: dichotomy or scale? Harry T. Dyer (UEA) 
• iRights Youth Juries. Elvira Perez Vallejos (Nottingham) 

Session E: Ethical Practicalities (II) 

• Gaining access to online interactions from an offline perspective: Ethical challenges faced in a study with Chilean adolescents. Paulina Ruiz (Bristol)
• The ethics of ‘informed consent’ and the waiving of anonymity: Analysing blog texts of breast cancer bloggers’ lived experiences. Cathy Ure (Salford)
• Public attitudes to reported instance of personal data usage #AnalyzeMyData. Ansgar Koene (Nottingham)

Session F: Panel Session: 

• Ethical Challenges for Visual Social Media Research: Are Images Different? Dr Farida Vis, Dr Anne Burns and Alexandra Boutopoulou who are all based in the Visual Social Media Lab (http://visualsocialmedialab.org/) at the University of Sheffield. 

1530 Coffee 

1600 Keynote 2
Where next for #SocialEthics? 
Steven Ginnis (Head of Digital Research, Social Research Institute, Ipsos MORI) and Harry Evans (Research Analyst, Social Research Institute, Ipsos MORI).

1700: Closing Remarks Followed by a Wine Reception (Sponsored by Sage Publishing).