Abstract
Online social networks (OSNs) have rapidly become a prominent and widely used service, offering a wealth of personal and sensitive information with significant security and privacy implications. Hence, OSNs are also an important— and popular—subject for research. To perform research based on real-life evidence, however, researchers may need to access OSN data, such as texts and files uploaded by users and connections among users. This raises significant ethical problems. Currently, there are no clear ethical guidelines, and researchers may end up (unintentionally) performing ethically questionable research, sometimes even when more ethical research alternatives exist. For example, several studies have employed ‘‘fake identities’’ to collect data from OSNs, but fake identities may be used for attacks and are considered a security issue. Is it legitimate to use fake identities for studying OSNs or for collecting OSN data for research? We present a taxonomy of the ethical challenges facing researchers of OSNs and compare different approaches. We demonstrate how ethical considerations have been taken into account in previous studies that used fake identities. In addition, several possible approaches are offered to reduce or avoid ethical misconducts. We hope this work will stimulate the development and use of ethical practices and methods in the research of online social networks.
Introduction
Online social networks (OSNs), often referred to associal media, have rapidly become an integral part of society. They are widely used by many and contain a wealth of information, much of it sensitive and personal. This vast source of pertinent information allows for innovative applications of OSNs, and many of these innovations are designed to benefit both society at large and individuals in particular to identify possible threats to society or individuals. For example, a study on OSNs can assist in the identification of individuals who are inclined to commit suicide or initiate a terror attack, thus enabling a priori prevention. On the other hand, there are also many ways in which OSNs may be abused, resulting in inappropriate or harmful actions.
Conclusions
Research involving the operation of widely-used online social networks the behavior of OSN users, is vital to the design of improved OSNs, OSN applications, and especially OSN privacy and security mechanisms. Indeed, research on online social networks and OSN data can be useful in various research disciplines, such as the study of social behavior and the design of secure and usable social networks. It can also have value and applications in real life and; for example, it can facilitate detection and a priori prevention of terror attacks, theft, coercion, and other critical situation.
