[Air-L] Including screennames with tweets
Casey Lynn Fiesler
Casey.Fiesler at Colorado.EDU
Fri Jul 13 10:25:09 PDT 2018
Particularly given the kinds of concerns Rebecca has brought up, keep in mind that another option is to ask permission to publish content, or to ask whether they would like their handle included or not. If it’s a small number this might not be very arduous. You then might choose to include content if you don’t hear back from them - that you’re only checking for people who express discomfort. Here is a paper with an ethical considerations section at the end where they explain a process like this:
http://jesspater.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Hunger-Hurts-but-Starving-Works.pdf
Casey
On Jul 13, 2018, at 10:52 AM, Hayes, Rebecca M <hayes2r at cmich.edu<mailto:hayes2r at cmich.edu>> wrote:
Also I, of course, considered more than "it is public" but extensively whether I think it causes harm either way.
Thanks Again,
Becky
________________________________
From: Air-L <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org>> on behalf of Hayes, Rebecca M <hayes2r at cmich.edu<mailto:hayes2r at cmich.edu>>
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 6:43:02 PM
To: Jacobs, Naomi; air-l at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Including screennames with tweets
I really appreciate this discussion. It has helped me think through a lot. At first I had deleted all names. But I want to clarify that I am using tweets as examples in my book, for discussions
of particular hashtags. In all there are 12 tweets. All of them are demonstrating an example, and in a positive light. After these discussions we chose to delete the one example that was critical.
My main concern after all of this discussion and why I think I should include the names (in this case), is because who am I to not cite other peoples work? It airs on plagirism if I do not. And as academic I think we often fall into a paternalistic mindset thinking we know better than people about what they want or what they know. This is a public forum and we have to expect and respect that they know that, and in my case none of the public tweets I am using are presenting the users in negative ways (that I know of). This was such a hard decision to make!
Again thank you. This has been a very helpful discussion and I think that context matters in every one of these decisions.
Best,
Becky
________________________________
From: Air-L <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org>> on behalf of Jacobs, Naomi <naomi.jacobs at abdn.ac.uk<mailto:naomi.jacobs at abdn.ac.uk>>
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 6:28:43 PM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Including screennames with tweets
Hi all,
I agree with those suggesting that context is important, and that the consideration should be what harm may be caused.
In terms of potential solutions for anonymity, in some recent work (in press) I took the decision to anonymise the content of tweets by changing each quoted tweet in one of the following two ways: by either swapping words or phrases in a linked clause, or by substituting a word for a close synonym. This hopefully retained the content and emotional weight while preventing a simple search for the tweet. This is in a case study of conflict between members of a particular online community, and a commercial organisation.
By contrast, in a different context where the quoted tweet was a neutral statement related to an experience had by the user in their daily life, I contacted them to ask permission to quote verbatim with their username (and was granted it).
Naomi
Dr Naomi Jacobs
Research Fellow
TrustLens Project
Department of Computing Science
University of Aberdeen
+44 (0)1224 274564
-----Original Message-----
From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Casey Lynn Fiesler
Sent: 13 July 2018 17:08
To: Tarleton L. Gillespie <tlg28 at cornell.edu<mailto:tlg28 at cornell.edu>>
Cc: air-l at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Including screennames with tweets
Nick already mentioned out recent research about this, but I’ll just chime in and add a few thoughts:
It hasn’t come up at all what the subject matter of the papers/books are. I think that this is really relevant to an ethical analysis of this situation, because it goes to potential harm. There’s a big difference between “here is a tweet from someone talking about what they had for breakfast” and “here is a tweet from someone showing signs of a mental illness” or “here is a tweet from a political dissident who might be in physical danger”. Whether or not online content is PUBLIC is an important contextual factor (because of course if it’s not public, that’s a problem), but in my opinion should not be the only thing relevant for this decision.
Though it’s also worth pointing out that if the tweet is something that could actually lead to harm, the issue isn’t publishing the handle or not - because public tweets can be easily searched. In that case, it might be better not to quote a tweet verbatim, or to use composites.
As Tarleton says, the issue is whether a certain use is required to describe the work, which goes to a cost/benefit analysis. If it’s a tweet about breakfast that should be a different analysis than a tweet about a health condition. For the latter, you might want a more compelling reason for why the tweet needs to be there.
The account name issue is even more tricky because depending on the context, it is possible there could be harm by not giving someone CREDIT for their content. But unless that kind of thing is likely - given what Nick and I found, unless there’s a reason that a handle has explanatory value it seems to just add another layer of potential discomfort for the unknowing research participants.
That said, there are different norms in different communities about this kind of thing. What I’d like most to see is ethical analyses beyond “is it public or not” and for those analyses to be surfaced in the writing. So regardless of decisions, explaining them as part of methods would be great!
Casey
On Jul 13, 2018, at 9:27 AM, Tarleton L. Gillespie <tlg28 at cornell.edu<mailto:tlg28 at cornell.edu>> wrote:
Out of curiosity, I scanned through Twitter's ToS and related policies; I didn't see anything indicating how they want a tweet to be cited. Maybe it did in earlier versions, or I just missed it. But even so, it's not clear how Twitter's ToS has any standing or relevance to what a researcher does, as they're not the person contracting with Twitter in that contract. We could take their advice in to account, but I think Nick and Casey's point is the right one. What's the added value to the research of including the person's Twitter handle in the publication, such that it overcomes the possible discomfort and possible harm it could bring? It's surprising to me how often adding the handle / the name of the speaker / the interviewee really doesn't add to the analysis -- that we may be doing it more because it's what journalists do, or because we want to perform that it’s a legit tweet, or out of habit. Our instinct should not be how much can I publish based on what rights I think people have given up, but how far can I go to protect people and still make the cogent analysis the discussion requires.
Tarleton
On 7/13/18, 11:17 AM, "Air-L on behalf of Proferes, Nicholas" <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of nproferes at uky.edu<mailto:nproferes at uky.edu>> wrote:
Hi all,
Casey Fiesler and I recently published an article on Twitter users’ perceptions of the use of tweets in research (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2056305118763366).
One of our findings from the study was that when we asked, "How would you feel if a Tweet of yours was used in a research study and your Tweet was quoted in a published research paper, attributed to your Twitter handle?" only about ~24% of respondents indicated that they would be comfortable with this.
There's obviously a lot of situations in which including Twitter handles is appropriate (quoting public figures seems like a pretty clear cut case), but I do think it might be worth taking user expectations into consideration in that contextual decision, particularly if you are working with populations subject to harassment/bullying.
Cheers,
Nick
________________________________
From: Air-L <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org>> on behalf of Judith Rosenbaum-Andre <judith.rosenbaumandre at maine.edu<mailto:judith.rosenbaumandre at maine.edu>>
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 6:45:06 AM
To: daniel.thomas--airl at cl.cam.ac.uk<mailto:daniel.thomas--airl at cl.cam.ac.uk>
Cc: air-l at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Including screennames with tweets
I just recently published a book on Twitter, race, and gender, and my
publisher was very insistent I did use people's Twitter handles. For
clarification, I used all publicly available tweets. I went back and forth
on it myself a few times (and still every once in a while wake up in the
middle of the night thinking, "did I do the right thing?!"), but ended up
agreeing with them. Their argument, per Twitter's ToS, was that people's
tweets should be treated as you would an in-text citation (e.g., "Hayes
said"), as they are their thoughts and ideas, expressed in a public forum,
and thus they have earned the right to be credited for them (almost on a
par with copyright). Because I used public tweets anyone could and can
still find the tweets even if I hadn't listed the screen name, which
renders the argument that we need to protect their identity somewhat moot.
In my book, I discuss some pretty awful statements though, and I did make
sure to not choose tweets as examples that could really get people into
trouble with their employer, for instance, and would instead use more
innocuous tweets to illustrate my point. This kind of research, because I
use public tweets, falls outside of our IRB's scope, as they consider it
public information on a par with analyzing media content and thus
non-human-subjects research.
I don't know if this helps at all - I think it's a tough issue to deal
with, and both decisions, like you said, have their pros and cons.
On Fri, Jul 13, 2018 at 4:27 AM Daniel Thomas <
daniel.thomas--airl at cl.cam.ac.uk<mailto:daniel.thomas--airl at cl.cam.ac.uk>> wrote:
Dear Becky,
My understanding, though I haven't been involved in Twitter research
myself, is that academics in the US have mostly decided it is fine to
include screennames and that academics in the UK have mostly decided
it is not OK to include screennames. I think that Twitter ToS require
the sceennames to be included and allow publication as long as the
full tweet is published (including sceenname). However, publishing
without the sceenname is not permitted (this is second hand
information so I may be wrong). The other issue is that even if
sceennames are not included then it is easy to find the author from
the content of the tweet and so the authors are still trivially
deanonymised. Minor tweaks to punctuation/wording are apparently also
insufficient as Twitter's search function will still normally find the original tweet.
Depending on the research method you are using it may be possible to
write your own synthesised example tweets that are representative of
the kind of things people say. However, I know that for some
methods/fields that is not possible.
I think it is a question where you will want your Research Ethics
Board/IRB to sign off on your answer.
Helena Webb <helena.webb at cs.ox.ac.uk<mailto:helena.webb at cs.ox.ac.uk>> from the University of Oxford
might be a good person to talk to about this because she uses a
similar Twitter example in her research ethics case studies at the
workshops she runs. She did research that she was not able to publish
because she ran into this problem and was not able to find a solution
that protected the tweeters and was publishable.
Daniel
On 13/07/18 07:23, Hayes, Rebecca M wrote:
Dear All,
Can you please weigh in on the decision to include or not include
screennames
when we cite tweets in a book? The book is on new media and crime,
and we are using tweets in a few places as examples of some
different
discussions.
We are back and forth on whether we should include the screennames
and
at others or disclude them. The arguments we have seen thus far, are
to include them because it was made public and we are citing someones words.
The other argument is to disclude them
as the person did not consent to have it printed in that way persay,
and
the screenname attached in our book could be used to find and harass
the person. What are your thoughts?
Thank you,
Becky
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