Making ethical judgement calls about qualitative social media research on sensitive issues

Abstract

Social media provides a repository of qualitative data relevant to difficult to research sensitive issues. Researcher practices vary in terms of how to ethically collect such data. Some argue that public social media posts can be collected without the informed consent of the authors. Others agree researchers can collect public posts but suggest anonymizing them to protect authors. For some, however, much social media activity consists of private conversations occurring in public that can only be researched with informed consent. This article contrasts confessional posts on support forums with confessional vlogs on YouTube to highlight how the affordances, norms, and genre of digital platforms require researchers to adopt different ethical practices in relation to data collected from different platforms. The article argues that researchers should familiarize themselves with a platform when they evaluate whether they are observing private conversations occurring in public or creative productions meant for widespread dissemination.