Ethics In Social Media Monitoring & Analysis

Two of the top questions we are asked about conducting our research and monitoring in social media channels are 1) what about privacy? And 2) What about the ethical issues. They are good questions. On the privacy front, we stay within the bounds of Canada’s PIPEDA laws and observe similar privacy laws in other jurisdictions. The “ethics” question is a tougher one, I’ll admit. Here’s a bit of our take and we’d welcome your thoughts as well. The government departments we work with, federally, provincially, state and municipal are often the most concerned about privacy – I’m often impressed how much so.

This is a new field of “research” in many ways. Such a rich volume of data has never before been available to anyone, anywhere in the history of humanity. In ethical terms, there are a number of concerns and issues. Namely, what does one do with what one finds?

Let’s be very, very clear on one primary fact – if you put something publicly on the Web, that is not password protected or locked down with privacy stuff – it is public, so anyone can find it. After 200+ research projects, well, we’ve seen a lot of strange content out there.

Research in the digital world of Cyburbia has it’s issues. Some of these ethical issues are;

1. Potential Incriminating Content: What does one do if you come across activity that seems to be fraudulent in nature or seems to be breaking laws, like naughty content? Do you report it and if so, to which authorities? What are the implications of your firm as researching?

2. Libel or Slanderous Content: That’s a grey area, but sometimes you find content that could be libelous or damaging to another person. What do you do with it? Does the potentially damaged party deserve to know?

3. National Security Threats: What about content by terrorists or perceived terrorists and those of similar ilk? Do you report that to authorities?

4. Sockpuppeting, Trolling & Astroturfing: These types of behaviour around content manipulation occur all the time and can be a challenge to deal with for a researcher. Issues like sockpuppeting can have legal ramifications in some jurisdictions and must be dealt with…but on who’s shoulders does that rest?

In many cases we have established processes to deal with some of these issues. Our policies are always evolving and I can say we have some lively debates amongst the team here, and that’s good. But this is a new area of research and the answers are not always simple. Others are clear cut; if we see children being abused, we report it immediately to the relevant police authority. But libel or slander can sometimes be comedic or satirical in nature and the party being targeted may be fine with it.

What issues do you see? Do you think such monitoring is invasive?

(Author: G. Crouch)