Michael Zimmer, PhD, is a digital privacy and data ethics scholar at Marquette University
Discussions of social media platforms and their impact on communication, collaboration, sociability, privacy, and norms of information flow.
SOIS PhD student Nick Proferes and I have published a chapter in the new book Twitter and Society, edited by Katrin Weller, Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Merja Mahrt, and Cornelius Puschmann. Our contribution is "Privacy on Twitter, Twitter on Privacy". Here's our introduction:…
Read More “Privacy on Twitter, Twitter on Privacy” chapter in Twitter and Society
Today, after months of hard work by many hands, I'm happy to announce the launch of The Zuckerberg Files, a digital archive of all public utterances of Facebook's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Over 126 full-text transcripts and 60 video files are available…
I've been invited by the Ohio State University Libraries to contribute to an ongoing campus-wide series of Conversations on Morality, Politics, and Society (COMPAS). This year's theme is "Public/Private", and I will be presenting today on the topic "Is Library User…
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…
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…
Read More Thoughts on Privacy and the Use of Facebook to Recruit Research Subjects
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…
Read More ICA 2012: Researching Social Media: Ethical and Methodological Challenges
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…
Read More How to Adjust your Facebook Privacy Settings – 2012 Edition
Recently I noticed what appears to be some kind of bug -- and potentially major privacy concern -- on Facebook's feed and ticker features. Let me explain the scenario: For a moderate amount of time, I had been a "friend"…
Read More Are Ex-Friend’s Activities Visible in Facebook’s Feed and Ticker?
Only a few days before the State of Missouri passed a law restricting private contact between students and teachers on social media, I was contact by UW-Milwaukee's Department of Curriculum & Instruction to help social media guidelines for the student…
Facebook has provided only a generic comment noting that the gay-kiss image was removed in error. But many unanswered questions remain. Critical questions, indeed, considering the cruel dichotomy of Facebook's mission to "[Give] people the power to share and make the world more open and connected" and its unquestioned power to control the platform, and thus the conditions under which people are allowed to share.
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