Social media data
Table of contents
Social media data such as Instagram or discussion forums are often interesting to study. However, they also come with different challenges that the researcher needs to be aware of.
Informing and consent
Remember that people have the right to know that they are the subject of research.
According to the university instructions at the moment, you must tell about the processing of personal data and ask for consent even when the data is from social media. These instructions are being updated and more specific instructions will be added here.
- Inform and ask for consent. For example, send the privacy notice, research notification and consent form to the influencer whose platform you study.
- What if you are unable to contact people personally? When talking about informing:
- Make the privacy notice publicly available. For example, if you investigate comments on a public social media channel, link the privacy notice to the comments.
- In other words, a privacy notice will be published if delivering it to everyone would cause unreasonable effort. As a student, you have and JYU SharePoint that can be used to publish the privacy notice.
- If consent cannot be obtained, you need an ethical review from JYU. Contact Raija Oikari first, please.
TIP:
The writings on the Suomi24 discussion forum are available through the Language Bank of Finland. The Language Bank is an archive where various language materials are stored.
Research ethics
When social media is used as research material, it inevitably involves ethical research questions. This is the case even if the material is publicly displayed on the internet.
Ethical challenges:
- Consider what kind of risks or harms the processing of personal data can cause? Are there ethical problems related to the use of the data? Typically you should not research closed groups due to ethical challenges in your thesis.
- The use of social media as research data is in itself an ethical challenge, as content produced for social media is not intended for research.
- Can persons be harmed if, for example, their social media posts are studied and highlighted in the thesis and thus brought to the attention of a new audience? Consider carefully whether you can use direct quotes, as the post will then be easy to find by googling.
- Consider how sensitive the contents are. Examples of particularly sensitive topics: criminal convictions, drug use, financial problems, mental health problems, controversial political opinions and activism. What kind of harm or damage could persons then suffer as a result of being the subject of the investigation? It is recommended to avoid such social media topics in theses, as the research could then involve ethical challenges of such magnitude that they cannot be solved within the framework of the thesis.
- Do not investigate closed groups that require you to request an access to them, as this would be ethically very challenging. If, on the other hand, it is, for example, a Facebook group that is open so that without logging in, anyone can read the content, it would be possible to study the group. Still, consider the ethical challenges and, for example, questions related to informing people whose posts or account you study.
- Ethical issues related to social media data are written about, for example, in the
Social media data often requires an impact assessment, especially if the topic is sensitive or you cannot inform.
How about the Terms of service?
- For Facebook and Instagram, the definition is particularly challenging due to frequently changing terms of service.
- Check the terms of service. They are subject to change, so always check for the latest version. What the Terms of Use say about data storage, content publicity, content sharing, copyright, and more.
Not all information found on the Internet is public. Consider on a case-by-case basis and consider from an ethical perspective.