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Latest News:

• I am part of a team of experts helping Gizmodo release the “Facebook Papers” in a responsible and ethical way. Details at “We’re Making the Facebook Papers Public. Here’s Why and How“
• New appointment: I’ve recently been designated the ethics advisor for the European Commission-sponsored SPATIAL Project (Security and Privacy Accountable Technology Innovations, Algorithms, and Machine Learning)
• I was interviewed for the Medical Ethics Advisor newsletter on how “IRBs Face Unique Ethics Questions About Big Data Research“
• New paper from the PERVADE project: “Excavating awareness and power in data science: A manifesto for trustworthy pervasive data research” in Big Data & Society
• New report: “Public Opinion Research on Artificial Intelligence in Public Health Responses: Results of Focus Groups With Four Communities” was published by the AAAS.
• New paper: “Studying Reddit: A Systematic Overview of Disciplines, Approaches, Methods, and Ethics” has been published in Social Media + Society.
• I contributed to the Pew Research Center’s recent reports “Experts Say the ‘New Normal’ in 2025 Will Be Far More Tech-Driven, Presenting More Big Challenges” and “Experts Doubt Ethical AI Design Will Be Broadly Adopted as the Norm Within the Next Decade”
• I was recently featured in “People of ACM”.

Current Projects:

• Collaborating with a multidisciplinary team on PERVADE (Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research), a 4-year research project funded by a $3 million LARGE grant from the NSF to study how diverse stakeholders – big data researchers, platforms, regulators, and user communities – understand their ethical obligations and choices related to computational research that relies on big, pervasive data sets about people.
• Collaborating with Dr. Jessica Vitak (University of Maryland) on the SSRC Rapid-Response Grants on Covid-19 and the Social Sciences funded project “How Covid-19 Is Changing Workplace Surveillance: American Workers’ Experiences and Privacy Expectations When Working from Home“.
• Working with Dr. Jordan Smoller (Harvard) and the SmollerLab team on NIMH-funded efforts to ethically utilize machine learning methods, integrate multiple data sources, and apply natural language processing approaches for suicide risk prediction.
• Curation of The Zuckerberg Files, a digital archive of all public utterances of Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, spanning 2004-2021. We currently have over 1,200 transcript files and over 200 videos archived for researchers.
• Co-editor of the “Information Society” book series at MIT Press (with Laura DeNardis).
• Various other fun projects with students and other collaborators. Too many to mention, but all exciting!

Recently Completed:

• AAAS-funded project “Public Opinion Research on Artificial Intelligence in Public Health Responses,” in collaboration with Dr. Praveen Madiraju (MU) and Dr. Zeno Franco (Medical College of Wisconsin). Our final report is available here.
• The Association of Internet Researchers recently published “Internet Research: Ethical Guidelines 3.0” which I co-authored with an amazing group of colleagues. I remain a co-chair of AoIR’s Ethics Working Group.
• I recently served on the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection’s Data Privacy and Security Advisory Committee, convened to evaluate the existing state of data privacy and security regulation in Wisconsin and its impact on consumers. Our report is available here.
• Collaborated with Dr. Jessica Vitak (University of Maryland) and Drs. Jason Pridmore and Daniel Trottier (Erasmus University) on the NSF-funded project “Mapping Privacy and Surveillance Dynamics in Emerging Mobile Ecosystems: Practices and Contexts in the Netherlands and US“. Most of our publications are available here.
• Dr. Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda and I recently published “Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Challenges, Cases, and Contexts“ with dozens of great contributors. A free PDF is available here.

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