Communications of the ACM
Researchers Propose Tactics for Ethical Use of Twitter Data
A set of guidelines has been proposed to ensure data is taken from Twitter feeds and used ethically.
Credit: Twitter
Researchers at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) have proposed guidelines to make sure data mined from Twitter feeds is obtained and used ethically.
Although Twitter data is public information, many users have a reasonable expectation of privacy. "Our guidelines are simple ways for researchers to respect the privacy of Twitter users while still conducting valuable research," says Caitlin Rivers, a doctoral student in Virginia Tech's Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology Program.
The Twitter guidelines are based on the U.S. Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, and contain six basic points. Twitter researchers should make objectives, methodologies, and data-handling practices transparent and easily accessible, and they should protect the anonymity of tweet authors by not publishing identifiable information without consent. In addition, researchers should not use tweet data to aggregate personal information from other sources, and they should honor Twitter users' efforts to control their personal data by not using private and deleted tweets. Finally, researchers should work with the Institutional Review Board for study designs that may compromise privacy and anonymity, and respect the context in which a tweet was sent.
The proposed guidelines are meant to inspire an open discussion among the research community.
From Virginia Tech News
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