Ethical and legal aspects of social media data usage

Abstract

This paper discusses the ethical and legal usage of social networking data (for instance, Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter, YouTube and other websites) enabled to answer vital research questions, generating economic, political and social forecasts, as well as understanding other processes. It aims to analyze the ethical and legal consequences of data misuse which took place in research practice and offers steps to prevent ethical and legal barriers that might arise while working with social networking data. The paper poses the following research tasks: 1) to describe the current state of ethical and legal aspects of social networking data usage taking into account existing Russian and international research; 2) to identify the circle of ethical and legal concerns that might emerge while working with social networking data; 3) to provide recommendations aimed at preventing ethical and legal misuse of such data. As it is shown in the paper, the main issue with the usage of such data is that it undermines the main ethical principle - voluntary participation in research. In addition, the tempting openness of social networking data can encourage the infringement of privacy rights, threaten personal data protection and harm the mental health of users. In spite of all efforts countries put to handle legal questions related to the usage of Big Data, current practice shows that possibilities developed by Big Data undermine principles of law and make people's right to privacy and such data incompatible. In the paper, the author suggests the following steps aimed at preventing ethical and legal violations of social media data usage: 1) to reconsider and adapt to social media environment such concepts as personal data, informed consent, ability of people to opt in and out of an experiment; 2) to develop detailed regulations of preliminary ethical and legal expertise of research proposals with social networking data and monitor results of ongoing research to prevent potential harm which might be caused by the usage of such data; 3) to develop a course (face-to-face or online) on research ethics with modules on Big Data usage for students, researchers and people who can be potentially involved in any research field.