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Summary

This week we looked at the ethical debate on collecting data from the internet. Open-source data use has been a debate since the dawn of the digital age; how does informed consent come into play? How can we correctly understand and contextualize public online posts? The internet is full of information and diverse perspectives protected by the relative anonymity of the online world, however, it is also full of deceit and missinformation.

Submitted Questions

Have any questions on the topic? Send either of us an email or call in when we are live! Open Source Research: An Ethical Debate

Using the Internet for qualitative research

Evans, A., Elford,J., & Wiggins, D. (2008)

Chapter from The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology. We focused on pages 3-10, and 23-27. Sourced from Qualitative Inquiry (Fall 2023)
An outline of issues associated with using the Internet for qualitative interviews

Pros and cons of online interviews – as with any method of research, online interviews have their advantages (such as low cost and wide geographic coverage) and disadvantages (such as narrow bandwidth of communication)
Establishing online rapport and trust – the lack of visual and aural cues in the text-based online environment raises the question of how the interviewer can build rapport and trust
Choosing between synchronous or asynchronous interviews – synchronicity of communication is the key difference between these two modes. It has a number of important implications for the online interview
Recruiting respondents – this typically takes place online through posting advertisements to online groups but could also occur offline
Ethical issues in online interviewing – there are certain issues that are specific to Internet research and guidelines are available for conducting research online

access article This is a great background article, if long. We asked, what are the limitations of the internet?

Power and Privilege

Koenig, A., & Egan, U. (2021)

Digital open source information — including the videos and photographs that people post to social media and other publicly accessible platforms — is increasingly valued as a critical source of evidence. While investigators have repeatedly established the value of open source information for researching a range of crimes, there is a subset of crimes that investigators have struggled to address with digital open sources — namely, sexual violence. In this article, we report on findings pulled from our interviews with international investigators and gender experts with regards to the perceived strengths and weaknesses of integrating digital open source information into international criminal investigations of sexual violence. More specifically, we elaborate on three insights into how open source investigations may be refined to better respect and protect the interests of survivors: by considering contextual issues related to ethics, power, and privilege, including the identity of the investigator and of the victims; by integrating a gender analysis and an intersectional analysis into online investigation planning; and by being thoughtful about consent, privacy, trauma and control — including who determines what happens with open source information and how such information is used in courts. We conclude with a discussion of what is needed to strengthen the efficacy and ethics of sexual violence investigations through the use of digital open sources. access article

WhyIDidntReport: Women Speak Out About Sexual Assault on Twitter

Guidry, J. P.D., Sawyer, A., Carlyle, K.E., Burton, C., (2021)

Background: In September 2018, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford accused then-nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. When then-U.S. President Donald Trump questioned her credibility on Twitter, sexual assault survivors began tweeting their reasons for not reporting using the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport. This study examined how these posts were discussed on Twitter and to what extent the tweets fit within levels of the Social Ecological Model (SEM). Method: This study used quantitative content analysis to code 1,000 tweets with #WhyIDidntReport for violence type, reasons for not reporting, and SEM levels. Results: Overall, 68.7% of posts mentioned a specific reason for not reporting; of these, 24.1% referred to the perpetrator being in a position of power, 36.3% feared not being believed, and 20.6% mentioned that others invalidated the assault. In addition, 47.6% mentioned a specific form of violence. Within the SEM, 47.6% referred to individual, 52.6% to relational, 43.2% to community, and 21.7% to societal reasons for not reporting. Conclusion: Reading social media content allows healthcare providers to directly discover how survivors talk about their experiences, priorities in the care environment, and how to support a patient-centered and trauma-informed approach. Implications: Understanding reasons people do not report sexual assault is critical for healthcare professionals to engage patients in open, honest screening and intervention efforts. access article This article is an example of using digital open source information to perform a study, specifically, looking at tweets under the #WhyIDidntReport

Understanding Social Media Disclosures of Sexual Abuse Through the Lenses of Support Seeking and Anonymity

Andalibi, N., Haimson, O.L., Choudhury, M.D., Forte, A., (2016)

Support seeking in stigmatized contexts is useful when the discloser receives the desired response, but it also entails social risks. Thus, people do not always disclose or seek support when they need it. One such stigmatized context for support seeking is sexual abuse. In this paper, we use mixed methods to understand abuse-related posts on reddit. First, we take a qualitative approach to understand post content. Then we use quantitative methods to investigate the use of "throwaway" accounts, which provide greater anonymity, and report on factors associated with support seeking and first-time disclosures. In addition to significant linguistic differences between throwaway and identified accounts, we find that those using throwaway accounts are significantly more likely to engage in seeking support. We also find that men are significantly more likely to use throwaway accounts when posting about sexual abuse. Results suggest that subreddit moderators and members who wish to provide support pay attention to throwaway accounts, and we discuss the importance of context-specific anonymity in support seeking. access article This article provides an analysis of social media use when disclosing sexual abuse. This can be helpful context for the article above.

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