Week 3
Texts
Brooker, P., Barnett, J., & Cribbin, T. (2016). Doing social media analytics. Big Data & Society, 3(2), 2053951716658060. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716658060
Reyman, J., & Sparby, E. (2020). Introduction: Toward an Ethic of Responsibility in Digital Aggression. In J. Reyman & E. Sparby, Digital Ethics: Rhetoric and Responsibility in Online Aggression (pp. 30-43). Routledge.
Trottier, D. (2018). Privacy and Surveillance. In J. Burgess, A. Marwick, & T. Poell, The SAGE Handbook of Social Media (pp. 463â478). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473984066.n26
Zimmer, M. (2010). âBut the data is already publicâ: On the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics and Information Technology; Dordrecht, 12(4), 313â325. http://dx.doi.org.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/10.1007/s10676-010-9227-5
The primary theme of the week is privacy, specifically privacy as a mutable, co-constructed value in social [networking] spaces. To draw from Trottierâs âPrivacy and Surveillanceâ chapter, privacy is often considered in both a legal and a cultural sense (my interest here is in the cultural), but itâs also frequently considered as an individual value or right (2). For example, thinking of âthe privacy of oneâs own homeâ constructs privacy as an individual (or family unit-based) concern that explicitly excludes others. Social media spaces, though, as evolutions of the social values of Web 2.0 like last weekâs readings discussed, is somewhere in-between public and private. As Zimmer writes in his critique of the âTastes, Ties, and Timesâ study, users may voluntarily upload personal information to a âpublicâ platform like Facebook, but they may also still reasonably expect that information to remain within certain publics (like their university network, their non-work friend group, their gaming circle, etc.). This makes consent and privacy ethics in research more complicated, especially when that intended-to-be-ephemeral information is recorded and shared with audiences stretching beyond the initial intended public and past the intended lifespan of the information. (The âright to be forgottenâ and the perennial interest in digging up embarrassing or offensive posts from internet usersâ pasts seems relevant here.)Â
In response to these complicated ethical concerns about privacy, the authors (independently) proposed three approaches. Trottier considers privacy through social co-surveillance or what he names âparticipatory surveillanceâ (5). In this understanding, participants willingly upload personal information to public platforms, knowing that we will be surveilled both by other users and by the companies who own the platforms, because there are enough benefits to doing so. The ethical questions center on the unanticipated uses of the data-fied content participants share, especially in imbalanced power relationships such as when a platform collects data about the social media user that the user may not know about and canât access (@ Facebook and TikTok). Privacy, or control over the spread and lifespan of oneâs data, then becomes a luxury for those who have the time and literacies to manage their online identities effectively and dodge surveillance creep (11). For Trottier, privacy is important, but itâs also critical to address these issues of surveillance and media literacy education more broadly.
Zimmerâs approach is more narrowly focused on individual privacy rather than broad-scale surveillance but advocates a dignity-based approach (321). The T3 researchers believed they would do no harm in their study but thought only of what malicious people could do with the collected data rather than the ethics of collecting it in the first place. The dignity-based approach addresses the potential violation of having oneâs personal information decontextualized, recorded, and shared beyond oneâs control as part of a dataset. Linking back to the idea of online spaces as a public, a dignity-based approach reifies that not all publics have the same expectations for permeability, longevity of information, and behaviour. This dovetails with the questions Reyman and Sparby ask about norms, expectations, and community definitions to guide their ethics of digital spaces. Taking these discussions about privacy and the ethical questions they raise as a guide, I have three clusters of questions:
Asymmetrical Connections on Social Media: As both Trottier and Zimmer discuss, social media users have different expectations of with whom they are interacting and sharing data in online spaces. On platforms like Facebook, this connection most often has to be accepted by both parties in an interaction--users can and usually do restrict content solely to their âfriendsâ or sometimes âfriends of friends.â Content is shared with an expectation of personal connection. This contrasts with other platforms like Twitter or Reddit where content is shared with others interested in the topic but not necessarily with expectations of personal connection. This is one reason platforms like Facebook may feel more intimate and why research there is even more ethically complex. My interest here is in how community care and intimacy is enacted in these sorts of asymmetrical social media spaces without the expectation of an âirlâ connection, like in the comments of Instagram posts made by public pages. Although these are entirely public-facing--anyone can see these comments without logging into Instagram--and the people commenting donât know each other in the ways Facebook users know each other, they perform intimacy and care in ways that replicate those more private spaces. Iâm thinking through how to ethically research this sort of private-public conversation.Â
Ethos of the Researcher: The T3 study used RAs to access information that was restricted to Harvard-only SM users, which is an unethical use of ethos. One approach to avoid inappropriate access to personal data would be to make a new, unaffiliated/unconnected account, ensuring that it was clearly visible to everyone that the account was collecting data for research purposes and to ensure that only truly âpublicâ data was collected. However, in the context of researching marginalized communities, it matters a lot that I, as the researcher, am also a community researcher. This is a benefit and builds trust when doing (auto)ethnographic research, but it seems like it makes potential SM research more difficult. Reyman and Sparby ask âWhat are the ethical expectations users attach to the venue in which they are interacting?â (2). This ties into the asymmetrical connections and sub-cultural behavioral expectations in social media communities, but it also ties into the expectations of who is âallowedâ to enter, contribute, and ask questions in these spaces.Â
Articulation of Research: Again, Reyman and Sparby ask, âDoes the research definition of context match the way owners, users, or members might define it?â (2). The subjects of the 3T study were never asked for consent nor initially told that they would be a part of any research, much less given the opportunity to shape the research itself or their participation in it. When Iâm thinking about visualizing data--which could be useful to show community ties--how do I do so in a way that avoids violating the privacy of individual participants or even small or more vulnerable clusters/communities?
