ETHICAL PRAXIS IN DIGITAL SOCIAL RESEARCH Yeliz TUNGA

OUTLINEIntroductionE-Social Science: A Constrained Environment

Example Project: T3 Project (The Tastes, Ties and Time)The Temptations of Big DataConclusion

Introduction

Aristotle asked a question? How should we live?Ethics should apply every part of human life not only science.Ethics evolve in science in much same way that method, theory do.Development of ethics is an essential part of the development of research expertise.

Introduction

Developments in science and technology have always run ahead of our ability to think through their consequences.Increase of ICT usage, at first glance does not affect scientific process and ICT usage support stage of scientific researchesEthics of using ICT the research process became a significant challenge.In this chapter, review of some challenges that are emerging for social sciences will be reviewed.

Ethical Challenges That Emerging For The Social Sciences

These challenges derive from number of sources. However most of them focus on using ICT to understand social issues and increasing desire on the part of public funding bodies for the demonstration of the impact of research investment.

Examples of Ethical Challenges That Emerging For The Social SciencesConcerns over data confidentiality, security and misuse resulted from ability to collect and integrate data in large Concerns about privacy and protection of identity of participants

E-Social Science

We have all digital footprint in our digital life.Technological devices collect huge data about our life. PoS devices record what we buy Security cameras record our daily lifes, routines etc. Internet providers record our searhers on the internet and visited websites, keywords

These data are integrated by cloud services and they are stored in warehouseThis information are valuable when they are intergrated since they have potential to reflect our profiles such as our interest our daily routines, thoughts about political and social issues etc.

E-Social ScienceThese information are valuable for both commercial and academic purposes. With these developments, social sciences have chance to collect huge amount of data.This is change the way we think about social issues and problems and it give chance to develop policies and solutions to social issues and problems.

E-Social Science There are also some drawbacks of these developments. Some questions related to e- social science as follows:

Where data is stored?Who can access it?How is it is being protected?If data is stored in cloud companies, what will be regulatory structures of multiple

countries?Privacy of builded up profiles of individuals?Quality of assesment procedures to ensure goodness of fit between and individuals and

builted up their profiles?

Consent In E-social Science

Consent occurs when one person voluntarily agrees to the proposal.In traditional research context, participant signed a consent, in e- social science it is a more problematic issue.

For example, facebook and twitter post are data of some social research, accepting as friend means is eqaul to giving consent?

Or Facebook and Twiiter can use their users information and post since everybody signs up the notion of the informed consent.

E-Social ScienceAnswer of these questions is not clear yet there is no enough regulations in law related to legal concept of the personal data.All these confusions and weakness, may create a problem for researchers even they have good intentions.Therefore regulations related to practices about e- social science and personal data concept are needed.

T3 PROJECT (The Tastes, Ties And Time)Their aim was to examine social relationships on the network- it is one of central concern of Social Sciences. Project was important since previous project about social relationships on the network sites are reliant on self reported data. Self reported data is open to personal bias.

T3 PROJECTProject was funded by US national science foundation.Harward university and university of california reserachers conducted a study related to facebook with the permission of facebook and involved students.Project was satisfied the harward university ethical approval process Project also had agree to project data available to other reseacrhers. (this is a funding body (NFS) requirement).

T3 PROJECTFacebook profiles harward students in 2006 (freshmans) was collected.Next there year (2007,2008, 2009) their updates was collected.

T3 PROJECTAt the end of project codebook was released. (codebook means data of project and in the code book students identity information does not included.)Precautions were taken to protect identity for participants and researhers to use this project data were need to agree set of conditions determined by reserachers.

Precautions Of T3 ProjectRA collected and coded the data. They have default access to reach students’ profile. If students want to part of his\ her profile shield from harward students’, this data remained so.Identifying information was deleted after coded immediately.Release of cultural lebels of students was delayed until after students had left the universityAll arrangement was done according to Harward ethical approval process.

Results And Failures You can read the detailed research results the article Tastes, ties, and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook. Com

Released data set have potential to identify participants identitiy sinceSome of courses are only given by Harward university this information revealed the university of participant and their locations.Demographic data of students (such as nationality) made them identifiable.A researcher, Zimmer, reidentify students information with cross-referencing of general tags (gender, nationality, race home status) etc.

Harward ethics approval process wasnt be enough to this project and revisions were necessary.

BIG DATA

Big data is term used to the integration of different sorts of information about individuals.

There are 4 broad categories

Big Data Types

Data held by goverment or other public

agencies• Complaints or

other interactons with planing agencies

• Land registery entries

Data held by private

companies and traded by them

• Credit card records

• Call data• Security

camera images

Online content uploaded by individuals

• Facebook entries

• Twitter posts

Dijital traces held by internet

providers• Web search

histories• Text message• E-mails• Geolocation

data

RISK OF BIG DATA1. Volume cannot compensate for quality – garbage in garbage out2. Big data is not collected by trained social scientists but

harvested for specific organizational or policy purposes. 3. Interpretation of data

CONCLUSIONIn this chapter e- social sciences and implications of it was discussed.The research process, research management and research topics has changed with emergence of e-social sciences.Conducting multi-cultural and multi-discplinary research is easy than past. That encourage building up e- research team from different parts of the world. There are new problems related to the ethics such as privacy, data cleansing, standardization of dataThe social contact between researher and researhed has changed since the social norms are no longer force the researchers they can easily join online community and collect data.

CONCLUSIONWith e-research, materials, data, resources has changed. They are defined as personal research property rather researchers encouraged to share their data for public goodness and other researchers.Informed consent term is meaningless. Since data of these research are reusable and definiton of personal and private data are not clear and legally done.Research management is harder than past. Researcher will have brave to take action even this means early termination of the project.

REFERENCE Innovations in Digital Research Methods- Chapter 12