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Influenced by the Belmont Report, but also by the special challenges of performing research on human subjects online, many professional associations have published guidelines for ethical decision making in online research. One influential set of guidelines was published by the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) in 2002 and again in 2012 (http://aoir.org/ethics). The original 2002 AoIR guidelines discuss issues pertaining to informed consent and the ethical expectations of online users. The group’s more recent 2012 guidelines draw particular attention to three areas that need to be negotiated by researchers using user-generated online data: the concept of human subjects, public versus private online spaces, and data or persons. The 2012 guidelines do not prescribe a set of dos and don’ts but instead recommend a series of questions for researchers to consider when thinking about the ethical dimensions of their study.

For human subjects, the AoIR guidelines state as a key guiding principle that because “all digital information at some point involves individual persons, consideration of principles related to research on human subjects may be necessary even if it is not immediately apparent how and where persons are involved in the research data.” However, while the term human subject persists as a guiding concept for ethical social research, in Internet research this gets a bit tricky:

“Human subject” has never been a good fit for describing many internet-based research environments. Ongoing debates among our community of scholars illustrate a diverse, educated range of standpoints on the answers to the question of what constitutes a “human subject.” We agree with other regulatory bodies that the term no longer enjoys the relatively straightforward definitional status it once did. As a community of scholars, we maintain the stance that when considered outside a regulatory framework, the concept of “human subject” may not be as relevant as other terms such as harm, vulnerability, personally identifiable information, and so forth. We encourage researchers to continue vigorous and critical discussion of the concept of “human subject,” both as it might be further specified in internet related research or as it might be supplanted by terms that more appropriately define the boundaries for what constitutes inquiry that might be ethically challenging. (p. 6)

A second major consideration in the AoIR ethics guidelines is the idea of public versus private data. While privacy is a concept that must include a consideration of expectations and consensus, a “clearly recognizable boundary” between public and private does not exist:

Individual and cultural definitions and expectations of privacy are ambiguous, contested, and changing. People may operate in public spaces but maintain strong perceptions or expectations of privacy. Or, they may acknowledge that the substance of their communication is public, but that the specific context in which it appears implies restrictions on how that information is—or ought to be—used by other parties. Data aggregators or search tools make information accessible to a wider public than what might have been originally intended. (p. 7)

The third consideration or tension in the AoIR guidelines is that between data and persons. The report’s authors noted the following:

The internet complicates the fundamental research ethics question of personhood. Is an avatar a person? Is one’s digital information an extension of the self? In the U.S. regulatory system, the primary question has generally been: Are we working with human subjects or not? If information is collected directly from individuals, such as an email exchange, instant message, or an interview in a virtual world, we are likely to naturally define the research scenario as one that involves a person.

For example, if you are working with a data set that contains thousands of tweets or Facebook posts, it may appear that your data are far removed from the people who did the actual tweeting or posting. While it may be hard to believe that the people who produced your data could be directly or indirectly impacted by the research, there is considerable evidence that even “anonymized” data sets contain personal information that allows the individuals who produced it to be identified. Researchers continue to debate how to adequately protect individuals when working with such data sets (e.g., Narayanan & Shmatikov, 2008, 2009; Sweeney, 2003). These debates are important because they are concerned with the fundamental ethical principle of minimizing harm; the connection between a person’s online data and his or her physical person could possibly lead to psychological, economic, or even physical, harm. Thus, as a researcher, you must consider whether your data can possibly be linked back to the people who produced it and whether there are scenarios in which this link could cause them harm.

Professional research associations such as the British Psychological Society (www.bps.org.uk/system/files/Public%20files/inf206-guidelines-for-internet-mediated-research.pdf) and American Psychological Association (APA; www.apa.org/science/leadership/bsa/internet/internet-report.aspx) have developed their own reports and ethical guidelines for online research. But because not all professional research associations have developed their own guidelines, it is critical that you submit your research proposal to your IRB for review before collecting or analyzing data.