Today I have the great privilege of presenting the preliminary results of a research project exploring the ethics of Twitter-based research, co-authored with Nick Proferes, at the second annual International Symposium on Digital Ethics, hosted by the Center for Digital…
Category: Platforms
Thoughts on Privacy and the Use of Facebook to Recruit Research Subjects
Recently, I was approached by a team of researchers concerned with the research ethics issues related to using Facebook to recruit human subjects. Specifically, the team was planning to use Facebook advertisements in order to target certain users for a…
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Information Society Series Book: The Digital Rights Movement
I’m very pleased to announce that the fourth book in the MIT Press “Information Society Series” I am co-editing with Laura DeNardis has been released: The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright Hector Postigo The…
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International Symposium on Internet Ethics presentation: “Internet Ethics Issues and Action in the United States”
Next week I will be a featured speaker at the first "International Symposium on Internet Ethics" hosted by the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) and Korea Society of Internet Ethics (KSIE). Alongside other international representatives, I will be presenting…
ICA 2012: Researching Social Media: Ethical and Methodological Challenges
I'm currently in Phoenix, AZ for the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, participating on an important panel on "Researching Social Media: Ethical and Methodological Challenges", organized by Anders Olof Larsson (Uppsala) and Hallvard Moe (Bergen). The panel is…
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How to Adjust your Facebook Privacy Settings – 2012 Edition
The 2012 edition of Choose Privacy Week, the annual initiative of the American Library Association that invites the public into a national conversation about privacy rights in a digital age, is wrapping up (and don't miss our special screening of…
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New Survey Confirms Librarians’ Commitment to Protecting Privacy Rights
In celebration of Choose Privacy Week, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom has released preliminary findings from a new survey on "Librarian Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Informational Privacy" that I conducted on their behalf with generous support from the…
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Research Ethics and the Blackberry Project
Forbes privacy columnist Kashmir Hill recently published a profile of University of Texas-Dallas developmental psychology professor Marion Underwood's large-scale research project titled “The Blackberry Project.” The Blackberry Project is an ongoing longitudinal study examining teen behavior and sociability, which first recruited its subjects in 2003. Then, in 2009, the subjects (now entering 8th grade) were provided with BlackBerry devices with unlimited text and data plans paid for by the investigators. The devices were configured so that the content of all text messages, e-mail messages, and instant messages was saved to a secure server to be mined by the researchers -- over 500,000 messages a month are being archived. While the Blackberry Project appears to have been managed properly through the IRB rules and regulations, it highlights emerging ethical concerns with projects of this nature, including issues of consent, undue influence, and privacy & anonymity.
Values in Design of Future Internet Architecture
A central theme in much of my research and advocacy is ensuring attention to ethical values becomes an integral part of the conception, design, and development of information systems. Various frameworks have been developed to help pursue this goal (ie,…
iConference 2012: The ethical (re)design of the Google Books project
I'm currently in Toronto, Canada for iConference 2012, presented by the iSchools organization, a worldwide collective of 33 Information Schools. The theme of the conference is "Culture-Design-Society", and I will be presenting a paper titled "The ethical (re)design of the…
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