[Air-L] Reddit dataset

[Michael T Zimmer]

Yeah, I’d probably agree with such an approach (which is the more nuanced thinking I’d hope for, rather than just an automatic “public=always ok”). 

-- 
Michael Zimmer, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Information Studies
Director, Center for Information Policy Research
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
e: zimmerm at uwm.edu
w: www.michaelzimmer.org


> On Jul 4, 2015, at 2:25 PM, Alex Halavais <alex at halavais.net> wrote:
> 
> I think it's worth considering the context of the comments and taking
> steps to reduce harm. I also think that when you do things in public
> fora, you are subjecting yourself to the possibility of becoming
> someone's research subject. While it's important to consider harm in
> the process, it is also not essential to obtain consent of those who
> posted.
> 
> I've used Reddit data. The only time I requested consent was for
> direct quotations, since it could be easily traced back to the
> original commenters.  For aggregated analysis, I think that requesting
> such permission is both onerous and unnecessary, and greater
> collective damage is caused by the research that might be left undone
> because of unnecessarily strict drawing of privacy lines.
> 
> - Alex
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 10:51 AM, Alex Leavitt <alexleavitt at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Just to give more context, the reddit API cannot scrape 'private'
>> subreddits. So yes, it is entirely public data. That said, I think there
>> are some social data issues to consider, such as persistence and issues of
>> access, but technically those issues exist through reddit's search
>> functionality (and actually play an important role in accountability on the
>> platform for individuals).
>> 
>> 
>> ---
>> 
>> Alexander Leavitt
>> PhD Candidate
>> USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
>> http://alexleavitt.com
>> Twitter: @alexleavitt <http://twitter.com/alexleavitt>
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 5:31 AM, Michael T Zimmer <zimmerm at uwm.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> I saw that, but has it since been deleted by the OP? I can’t seem to find
>>> it, nor the thread on Reddit.
>>> 
>>> IIRC, a Redditor used the site’s API to grab all comments ever posted to
>>> the site, but it wasn’t clear if this included subreddits that are set as
>>> “private.”
>>> 
>>> In the Facebook post, the OP appeared to cast aside concerns over consent
>>> since the data was “public”. While I’d agree the data is public in the
>>> sense that anyone could access it (if they had the URLs, search
>>> capabilities, time, etc to do so), this calculus is much too simplistic and
>>> ignores the contextual nature of those comments. As another commenter on
>>> the FB thread (was that you, Katy? I can’t remember) noted, just because
>>> someone posted a comment to Reddit doesn’t mean they’ve necessarily
>>> consented to having that data included in a research study. Plus, as the
>>> commenter noted, there likely are minors in the dataset, which complicates
>>> consent.
>>> 
>>> This relates closely to what I discuss in my article "'But the data is
>>> already public': on the ethics of research in Facebook”, and others have
>>> covered as well, especially in the AoIR Ethics Guidelines:
>>> http://ethics.aoir.org/
>>> 
>>> Michael
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Michael Zimmer, PhD
>>> Associate Professor, School of Information Studies
>>> Director, Center for Information Policy Research
>>> University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
>>> e: zimmerm at uwm.edu
>>> w: www.michaelzimmer.org
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Jul 3, 2015, at 9:41 PM, Katy Pearce <katycarvt at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Someone posted a link to a dataset of Reddit posts to the AOIR Facebook
>>>> page.
>>>> I wonder what the AOIR community members feel about this in terms of this
>>>> being "public" data.
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> // Alexander Halavais, Sociologist, Semiologist, and Saboteur Extraordinaire
> // Associate Professor of Social Technologies, Arizona State University
> // http://alex.halavais.net/bio     @halavais
>