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IRBs are university committees that approve, monitor, and review behavioral and biomedical research involving humans. Within higher education institutions ethical approval is required from a university-level ethics committee for any research involving human participants. IRBs and other university ethics committees continue to develop and revise standards to keep up with evolving social media and big data technologies.

Since the 1990s, a consensus has emerged that the study of computer-mediated and Internet-based communication often requires that IRBs modify their human subjects principles and research ethics policies. Such modifications are necessary because in online environments it is often impossible to gain the consent of research participants (Sveningsson, 2003), and there is often an expectation of public exposure by users. Researchers and ethics professionals who write and revise university research ethics policies continue to grapple with several issues that we address next, including privacy, informed consent, manipulation of human subjects, and publishing ethics.