There is enormous potential to harness the power of social media as a researcher, not just to promote your research findings, but as a way to collect new and interesting data. However, the ethical principles around conducting research on social media and using social media data are something that need careful consideration before planning a research project.
In this session we will reflect upon a range of issues and questions that arise when you wish to analyse or use data from social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. What are the gaps in the data available? That is, who are you excluding when doing social media research? What do concepts such as privacy, confidentiality and informed consent mean in research around social media? Are you allowed to text and data mine from social media? How do you do this? How do you get ethical approval for scraping data from social media? We’ll refer to good practice principles and guides from organisations such as the Association for Internet Researchers (https://aoir.org/ethics/) as well as sharing useful resources to help you get started.
We encourage participants to bring their own research projects and examples, experiences, questions and concerns to the session.
If possible please take a look at the following two publications for discussion:
https://search-proquest-com.gate3.library.lse.ac.uk/docview/861541787?accountid=9630&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-internet-research/
Facilitator: Ellen Helsper, Professor in Digital Inequalities, Department of Media and Communications
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