Michael Zimmer.org

On Wednesday, July 21, 2010, I will be presenting in front of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), part of the Office for Human Research Protections in the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). My presentation will focus on how Web 2.0 tools, environments, and experiences are creating new conceptual gaps in our understanding of privacy, anonymity/identifiability, consent, and harm.

Recently I’ve found myself absorbed in various issues surrounding Internet research ethics: the Tastes, Ties, and Time Facebook data release, Pete Warden’s plans to release a database of public Facebook information on 215 million users, etc. To help work through some of these issues — and assist others who are much more qualified than I to figure them out — I’ve been lucky to join Elizabeth Buchanan and Charles Ess on their NSF-funded project to launch the Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Resource Center, and Commons.
Complementing this new research …

Speaking of the research ethics related to automatically harvesting public social networking data, we are confronted this week with the story of Pete Warden, a former Apple engineer who has spent the last six months harvesting and analyzing data from some 215 million public Facebook profile pages.
According to Warden, he exploited a flaw in Facebook’s architecture to access public profiles without needing to be signed in to a Facebook account, effectively avoiding being bound by Facebook’s Terms of Service preventing such automated harvesting of data. As a result, he amassed …

While participating in the workshop on Revisiting Research Ethics in the Facebook Era: Challenges in Emerging CSCW Research, the question arose as to whether it was ethical for researchers to follow and systematically capture public Twitter streams without first obtaining specific, informed consent by the subjects. Many in the room felt that consent was not necessary since the tweets are public, a conscious choice made by the user to allow the whole world see her activity. In short, by not restricting …

I’m currently in Savannah, GA to participate in a workshop on Revisiting Research Ethics in the Facebook Era: Challenges in Emerging CSCW Research at CSCW 2010.
This is my first time at CSCW, and looking at the set of papers for this workshop, it should be an excellent experience. I’ve submitted a brief analysis of the “Tastes, Ties, and Time” Facebook dataset release (my larger paper is going through its final edits for publication). You can download the short analysis here: Subject Privacy and the Release of the “Tastes, …

For the last 353 days, I’ve been part of a team planning Internet Research 10.0 – Internet: Critical, the 10th annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). My life is about to get back to normal, as an interdisciplinary collection of nearly 400 scholars, researchers and graduate students interested in Internet and new media studies are descending on Milwaukee this week.
The conference program is fantastic, featuring keynote addresses by Siva Vaidhyanathan, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, and Megan Boler. I’ll be presenting an updated version of my paper, “But …

Congratulations to Elizabeth Buchanan and Charles Ess for being awarded an NSF grant to create a much-needed repository and advisory board to address the challenges that emerging Internet and Web 2.0 platforms are placing on research ethics.
I’m thrilled to be among the senior personnel on this grant, and look forward to the collaboration and results.
[Note: The Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Resource Center, and Commons website is now live]
Here is the summary of the research project:

Internet Research and Ethics 2.0:
The Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Interactive Resource Center, and Online …

Next week I will be attending the 8th International Conference of Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry in Corfu, Greece, where I will be presenting an early draft of a paper based on my critique of the “Taste, Ties, and Time” Facebook data release.
Recall that last fall, a group of researchers affiliated with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University released a dataset of Facebook profile information from an entire cohort (the class of 2009) of college students from “an anonymous, northeastern American university.” While the researchers took good …

One of my students pointed me to this post noting that Sony Online Entertainment has provided 4 years of server log data for their online game EverQuest 2 to researchers. From the Ars Technica story:
With the cooperation of Sony, a collaborative group of academic researchers at a number of institutions have obtained the complete server logs from the company’s Everquest 2 MMORPG. …Dmitri Williams introduced the project and described how researchers have been approaching various game developers over the years. He paraphrased the conversation with Sony as:
“What do you collect?”
“Well, …

(See my update at the bottom of the post, as well as Fred Stutzman’s thoughtful analysis)
As mentioned the other day, a group of researchers from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University released a dataset of Facebook profile information from an entire cohort (the class of 2009) of college students from “an anonymous, northeastern American university.”
(I’ve been engaging with Jason Kaufman, the PI for this research, on a variety of privacy and research ethics issues in this post and the comments section – please check it out.)
Well, …

(Updated below with responses to comments by Jason Kaufman, one of the lead researchers on this project)
(Another update: I’m pretty sure the “anonymous, Northeastern university” from where this dataset was derived is Harvard College. Details here)
A group of researchers have released a dataset of Facebook profile information from a group of college students for research purposes, which I know a lot of people will find quite valuable. (Thanks to Fred Stutzman for bringing it to my attention.)
Here is the description from the Berkman Center’s announcement:
The dataset comprises machine-readable files of …