[Air-L] Including screennames with tweets

[Tarleton L. Gillespie]

I think someone who administers IRB would disagree. Even if we take tweets to be public statements, and even if we the users in this case fully understood them as public, there are different values to think about. As researchers, our obligation is to recognize that including people in our work, however valuable to the research, can come at a cost for the people made into subjects of that research; part of the commitment to being a researcher then means respecting people's autonomy and treating them ethically, "not only by respecting their decisions and protecting them from harm, but also by making efforts to secure their well-being" (http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/EP/EP713_ResearchEthics/EP713_ResearchEthics3.html) Instead of "If you choose to exclude, you will have to explain why" I think IRB principles would say it’s the reverse: if you're including the identity of your research subjects, you will have to explain why -- and probably to them.

Paula, by the end your comment seems to imply that what's at issue is whether to quote the tweet itself ("very risky"), but I think all that is being discussed here is identifying its author. I totally have the gut instinct to want to credit people, it's deeply ingrained in how we work. But the tweets in this case are not secondary sources of scholarship, they're being selected and used as examples. Other tweets could similarly have been chosen to make the same point. Their value is not that they were posted by person X, but that they sound a certain way or address a certain topic. I would err on the side of protecting the person, because I can't anticipate the harm and can't anticipate their framework for understanding and can't anticipate how they'd feel about their words being used as an object of my research -- unless, of course, I sought their actual consent, as Casey suggested.

This conversation is really helping me think about this, thanks all.

Tarleton




On 7/13/18, 1:46 PM, "Air-L on behalf of paula todd" <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org on behalf of paulatoddmedia at gmail.com> wrote:

    Hi, a few thoughts ...  Screen names are often creations/public projections
    and forms of agency, important/expressive in their own way. Signature
    selections are integral to the full social media message. Exclusion, then,
    is a form of censorship. If you choose to exclude, you will have to explain
    why. If the only reason is because someone who uses social media may not
    understand that their content is public and can therefore (legally) be
    reproduced or re-mediated on any platform, the same logic could apply to
    reproducing public content of any type. Very risky. The only cases I could
    justify such editorializing (selecting which parts of a communication to
    share) parallel general defamation and hate speech limitations. Social
    media is public, and of the public sphere; those who want to create
    private/privileged communication use peer-to-peer, offline, direct
    messaging, telephone *et al.*
    
    Paula
    
    
    *Paula Todd*
    B.A., LLB.(J.D.), PhD Can. (Digital Journalism)
    York & Ryerson Universities
    Toronto, Canada
    
    
    On Fri, Jul 13, 2018 at 2:23 AM, Hayes, Rebecca M <hayes2r at cmich.edu> 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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