[Air-L] Casey Fiesler on Research Ethics

Tue Mar 26 14:03:49 PDT 2019

Thanks for sharing, Joly!  I’m always a little reluctant to point to my own stuff!

As Nick points out, this op-ed is based on research I’ve been conducting with collaborators, including the Twitter ethics paper which references AOIR’s efforts - and has been discussed on this list at some point, if I recall correctly. :)  Since then, we’ve also been conducting interviews with people who are concerned about the amplification of their online content, and some analysis of published papers to see how researchers talk about the use of public data (definitions, ethical considerations or lack thereof, how they report data, etc.) - though we’re focus on the more computer science side of social computing (e.g., CSCW, ICWSM, as well as some machine learning venues). The other piece of my work related to this is on the role of TOS in making data collection decisions, but that was a little out of scope for a short op-ed!

I certainly don’t mean to suggest that I’m the first person to ever make these kinds of suggestions, but they’re drawn out of our findings rather than any existing ethical guidelines - though of course, one would expect to see some overlap.  I haven’t read the new AOIR version though! We looked to the 2012 guidelines when writing the paper.  And this stuff isn’t really in the ACM code.  I’m also on the SIGCHI ethics committee and though we’ve provided some feedback on related issues in the paper review process, the committee is not charged with creating guidelines, and therefore we look to existing norms within the community - which is why I’d love to see those norms evolve.

Though as Charles alludes to, this piece is written more with a computer science audience in mind, and though there are certainly more active discussions around ethics in recent years, it’s still happening more within HCI (which is my community) rather than machine learning and related disciplines. I guess I’m a little in between the two spaces, as I may seem more of a computer scientist to this crowd but in others I’m definitely seen more as the buzzkill ethicist/lawyer. :)

I’d certainly welcome any feedback on this work moving forward!

Casey

On Mar 26, 2019, at 8:38 AM, Proferes, Nicholas J <nproferes at uky.edu<mailto:nproferes at uky.edu>> wrote:

Hi Charles,

I’m glad you are thinking about incorporating Casey’s short op-ed into the index.

I co-authored one of the underlying pieces that the op-ed is based on: “Participant” Perceptions of Twitter Research Ethics [which, if you haven’t read you might enjoy: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118763366] In that work, we specifically reference AOIR’s guidelines (and the community’s ongoing revisions to the guidelines) in addition to other major sources that inform contemporary research ethics principles (Belmont Report, 45 CFR 46.101 in the U.S.).

Many of our findings sync nicely with what's in the AOIR guidelines. We also suggest some additional considerations researchers may want to think about based on the findings our survey of users’ levels of comfort and awareness of how researchers are using their data.

- Nick Proferes

________________________________
From: Air-L <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org>> on behalf of Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess at media.uio.no<mailto:c.m.ess at media.uio.no>>
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2019 4:40:50 AM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Casey Fiesler on Research Ethics

Yes.

And thanks very much for this.
It's hard to tell - but a good portion of this reads more or less
straight out of the AoIR ethics guidelines, including the draft for
Internet Research Ethics 3.0 distributed last fall in conjunction with
the annual conference.

Including the emphases on moving away from "rule-book" / tick-box
approaches to what we call (along with many others) dialogical /
process-oriented ethics grounded in the fine-grained specifics of a
given case.

The invocation of care (thereby, I suppose, more specifically (feminist)
care ethics) is also intriguing.  This is in part because over the past
few years (since 2014 or so), I've been seeing more such invocations
from network engineers (yes, this means you, AoIRist Bendert
Zevenbergen) and computer scientists, including the ethical backgrounds
to the emerging standards for "ethically-aligned design" by the IEEE.

Let me hastily clarify: I'm _not_ at all saying there was some sort of
plagiarism. Though it would be very interesting and helpful to know what
her sources are, e.g., the newest ACM guidelines, the IEEE project, or
perhaps even the AoIR guidelines, just so that we can incorporate the
article in our resource list and have a better sense of where it might
best be indexed, etc.
However that may be: I _am_ saying there's a wonderful consonance /
resonance, which I take to be a Very Good Thing.

Indeed, in light of the past four decades or so of efforts towards
better dialogue and cooperation between the more philosophical / applied
ethics folk and the multiple professional communities directly engaged
with the engineering, design, and implementation of these technologies -
these sorts of endorsements within the latter communities of such
nuanced and demanding ethical approaches is a remarkable and, in my
view, most propitious development.

Thanks for sharing!
- charles ess

On 26/03/2019 09:20, Joly MacFie wrote:
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhowwegettonext.com%2Fscientists-like-me-are-studying-your-tweets-are-you-ok-with-that-c2cfdfebf135&data=02%7C01%7Cnproferes%40uky.edu%7C092557a2d9094ba54e5108d6b1c6c3c8%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636891864591377701&sdata=K0CeQAo0ri1Cck6KdQetQT7OtnH9NTPcsBwO2WQoRlQ%3D&reserved=0

*Scientists... have an ethical obligation to exercise a higher standard of
care for people in more vulnerable positions, and this should extend to
collecting data from potentially vulnerable groups in digital spaces.*

--
Professor in Media Studies
Department of Media and Communication
University of Oslo
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