COMUNICAZIONI SOCIALI - 2023 - 2. Internet Research Ethics in the Platform Society: Theoretical Reflections, Research Experiences, and Open Questions

INTRODUCTION Over Twenty Years of Internet Research Ethics: Key Concepts and Future Challenges by ELISABETTA LOCATELLI - ALINE SHAKTI FRANZKE - CHARLES M. ESS is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Online users’ digital traces provide valuable information and empirical evidence, but Internet research requires scientific rigor in accessing and managing User Generated Contents (UGCs). The article challenges these practices and  advocates for a reflexive approach to social media research ethics. Although platforms offer viable access, utilizing such data can intrude on subjects’ private lives. Defining responsibilities toward data and subjects is crucial when  studying online contents, such as Instagram stories and Facebook posts. The subject’s centrality and ethical implications becomes particularly significant in social inquiry, where the object is closely tied to actively signifying subjects  and social relations mediated by institutions or technologies. The paper explores ethical issues in a concrete research project, “7 friends for 7 days”, and presents alternative research practices for observing and analyzing online content within the post-API research context. It discusses ethical challenges in Internet research, focusing on social media data, and examines a study that analyzed user-generated content through human-type coding. The paper  reflects on the ethical considerations in fabricating research evidence, particularly regarding UGC published on personal social media platforms and the critical awareness of those involved in observing and disseminating such data.

Collect and Handle Personal Social Media Data. Ethical Issues of an Empirical Internet Research by ELISABETTA RISI - GUIDO DI FRAIA is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Recent research has problematised online harassment as a risk in social media research. Scholars have since tried to address this through protective mechanisms in research processes, above all in antagonistic spaces such as far-right online groupings. This paper addresses a comparatively little explored area: risk identification and research ethics in ambiguous digital spaces. It draws on an ethnographic case study of a climate change sceptical Facebook  group that showed antagonistic tendencies in later stages of observation. It discusses how such groups may pose risk to researchers where they are part of the demographics typically targeted in them: scientific elites, female,  millennial, non-denialists, and international. The paper critically discusses researcher-sensitive approaches in research ethics, including contextual integrity and non-disclosure of research intent, in terms of who these processes  protect or expose given exclusionary right-wing gatekeepers and their creative mediated processes aimed at harassing outsiders. It will argue in favour of benefits gained from a) an ethical screening stage that considers latent aspects of ideological positioning such as moderation practices and visual vernaculars, and b) multimodal ethical assessments employing feminist and minority ethics of care as part of the vulnerability triad.

The Vulnerability Triad: New Considerations for Ethics and Risk Identification in Ambiguous and Antagonistic Digital Spaces by Suay Melisa Özkula is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

As internet research has proliferated, so too have ethical concerns about Internet research. Emerging ethical guidelines about Internet research have highlighted the importance of critically adapting research practices to respect privacy norms in different contexts, often through heuristic questions. Picking up this scholarship, this article develops heuristic questions for researching Instagram Live. First, I consider the challenges posed by Instagram Live in the access and collection stage of research by arguing that time adds a second axis of privacy. Next, I examine how storage can take Instagram Livestreams out of context and compromise its contextual integrity by stripping it of its  relational and affective components. Finally, I interrogate how Instagram Livestreams complicate power dynamics implicit in memory. Specifically, it may impose a “burden of liveness” on creators as livestreams are incorporated into disciplinary standards of publication.

Heuristic Questions for Instagram Live by Leah Corinne Jones is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this paper, we take stock of research being conducted and published in Canada in the past five years that engages with social media data to identify emerging and ongoing ethical challenges and ambiguities. Through examples  drawn from the contemporary research landscape, we demonstrate that the ‘thorniness’ of social media research ethics stems from three main issues: 1) the evolution of existing platform and emergence of new platforms,  introducing affordances that encourage personal disclosure in pervasive datafied environments; 2) new methods and tools that prioritize data access over research ethics; and 3) new topics of study that engage with sensitive data  about vulnerable groups online. We argue that the rise of pervasive datafication and platform affordances that encourage spontaneous, vulnerable content production creates increased risks to human subjects, and that research  ethics guidelines and practices must evolve to address these new and increased risks. Our goal is to provide direction for future work on social media research ethics that will empower researchers to navigate the complex terrain of  thorny ethics. This work builds on debates about Internet research ethics best practices, and suggests that in addition to case-by-case approaches to research ethics, there should be increased attention paid to the unstable nature of  social media and power of big data research. We suggest that research ethics should adopt a human-centered approach that privileges an individual’s desire to limit, control, examine, or engage with the data they have produced  online, and that we must develop practices and methods that allow researchers to engage with these desires in the research process. Our analysis responds to work that surfaces public opinion regarding social media research and  trustworthiness – work that argues that the standards by which REB/IRBs delineate public vs. private data are insufficient given the evolving contexts within which people are producing data and participating online. Maintaining  privacy, anonymity and consent requires increased attention to the changing and unstable platform landscape in which researchers are conducting their studies.

The ‘Thorniness’ of Social Media Research: Identifying Internet Research Ethics (IRE) Challenges and Ambiguities in the Canadian Context by Katie Mackinnon, Proshat Nouri-Behrouz, Jacquelyn Burkell is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Good research practice faces both ethical and methodological challenges that cannot always be met at the same time. This is also true for the study of digital trace data and digital media. However, questions of Internet research  ethics (IRE) have so far played a subordinate role in German media and communication studies, especially regarding quantitative methods. Based on 24 semi-structured interviews with German media and communication scholars  with experience in the field of (quantitative) Internet research, the current study explores perceived ethical challenges and proposed solutions. We identified two central themes, mirroring the theoretical debate about (1) privacy and  informed consent and (2) minimizing harm. Overall, our results show that researchers have developed casuistic strategies to address the various ethical challenges in studying the Internet. These strategies are often based on  practical research experiences rather than training or available information. This indicates the importance of having an ongoing discourse about IRE, integrating research ethics training into higher education, and providing practical recommendations.

Practicing Internet Research Ethics: Challenges and Solutions from a German Perspective by Arne Freya Zillich, Daniela Schlütz, Eva-Maria Roehse, Elena Link, Wiebke Möhring is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Freedom of speech is considered as one of the basic human rights. But it can’t be practiced in different regions of the globe. There are cultural, religious, political and traditional barriers and sometimes violent factors too. When it  comes to the Global South, many of the regions are considered unsafe for journalists and media professionals. In such regions, most of the media platforms, journalists and other media professionals opt for self-censorship on  sensitive issues. Some dare to discuss, question, report, follow fearlessly and also face consequences. That gives rise to self restrictions among media researchers to refrain from investigating sensitive issues, events and subjects.  This study aims to explore what makes media researchers avoid a particular topic despite having an interest in it and a need to enquire because of internet policies by the government. What kind of risk factors are generally expected  in the Global South for media research? How do self restrictions among media researchers affect research ethics? If there are any alternative ways to overcome the risk factors for digital media enquiries? This research is focused on  the Global South and specifically Pakistan as it’s considered one of the unsafe countries for journalists and media people. For that, existing practices and literature is reviewed. The paper presents a qualitative study. For data collection, 25 media researchers were interviewed as per their availability and willingness. They were analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings help to not only identify the nature of self-restrictions because of regional legal  policies but background reasons, effect and possible solutions too. It fills the pertinent gap in research related to self-restriction in the Global South. Unless self restrictions among media researchers are addressed, research ethics  are arguable in the Global South. As in such circumstances, the basic right to “freedom of expression” of media practitioners as well as media researchers and their safety is under threat.

Self-Restrictions among Media Researchers in Global South and Regional Priorities: Challenges for Freedom of Expression and Ethical Research by Sana Zainab, Maryam Mansoor, Uzma Gul is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

The article combines the genre of the visual essay with written-textual contextualizations, to analyse the attempts to reconstruct the Estonian memorialscape through the removal of Soviet memorials in the second part of 2022.  Theoretically grounded in a theory of discursive-material entanglement and assemblage theory, the article investigates these attempts to fixate history, but also the resistance they generate, by paying attention to the human  contestations (mainly through a politics of mourning) but also the material resistance and the recalcitrance of historical traces, through everyday life’s desacralizing routines and novel infrastructures, and material decay and neglect. The article ends with a reflection on the impossibility of discursive-material fixation, and on the mechanisms to transform the Estonian memorialscape in a more agonistic, participatory-dialogic and diverse space for the remembrance of World War II.

PILLE RUNNEL Palimpsestic Memorializations of World War II: A Visual Essay on Material Displacements and Discursive Struggles in the Estonian Memorialscape by Nico Carpentier, Pille Runnel, Inês Moreira, Ruth-Helene Melioranski is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

This article focuses on the Italian music industry from the perspective of gender. The Italian music industry can be considered a male-dominated workplace within which women while working, experience gender discrimination. This  article intends to answer the following research questions: (i) how women working in the music industry are perceived and ‘told’ in their professional context and (ii) which representations, sedimented in the male gaze, continue to  circulate in our culture. The empirical study is based on a qualitative secondary analysis of 75 narratives by female music workers focused on direct experiences. The results of this research confirm that the exclusion of women is  motivated by the shared idea that they have biological predispositions for other activities and/or personal or professional limits.

Words Backstage: Italian Music Industry and Gender Discrimination by Alessandra Micalizzi, Rebecca Paraciani is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0