‘‘But the Data is Already Public’’: On the Ethics of Research in Facebook

Author: Michael Zimmer

Publisher: Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Publication Year: 2010

Summary: The following paper articulates a set of ethical concerns that must be addressed before embarking on future research in social networking sites, including the nature of consent, properly identifying and respecting expectations of privacy on social network sites, strategies for data anonymization prior to public release, and the relative expertise of institutional review boards when confronted with research projects based on data gleaned from social media.