Author: Leanne Townsend, Claire Wallace
Publisher: Economic and Social Research Council
Publication Year: N/A
Summary: The following guide discusses how social media has enabled researchers to quickly obtain information about people’s attitudes in weeks rather than the years it took previously. They discuss how this can be problematic using examples like marijuana legalization. If a Twitter user posts about his/her weed usage, that could potentially get the user in legal trouble. A researcher collecting information about online sentiment toward marijuana usage would have to be extremely careful to not reveal the user’s identity. The authors also express concern that data mined from private forums and pages would be taken without permission, violating people’s right to privacy. The article concludes by proposing that large organizations form data ethics committees to regulate research gathered from public forums. The committee would help minimize any privacy concerns and allow researchers to focus on making great analytical findings.