[Air-L] About social media data availability

[Luke Munn]

Marcela is correct to highlight the dangers of re-identification. You're
probably thinking of Latanya Sweeney's work in this space, which has been
around for a couple decades and has been highly cited.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/04/25/harvard-professor-re-identifies-anonymous-volunteers-in-dna-study/?sh=e0e614592c9b

https://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/paper1.pdf

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1142/S0218488502001648

ngā mihi / best,
Luke




On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 at 12:43, Marcela Canavarro via Air-L <
air-l at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:

> Hello!
>
> Modern data protection laws rule that anonimyzed data is when the person is
> not identified OR identifiable. You can say that, given available means
> today, you cannot guarantee that the individuals cannot be identifiable
> through data inference.
>
> Check out GDPR - the European Data Protection law - and LGPD - the
> Brazilian one. They both define anonymized data in that way.  It is also a
> good idea to check how the californian data protection act treat this
> topic.
>
> Also, there is a famous study where a huge anonymized data set was openly
> available and it took just a few hours for many people to be identified
> through data inference.  It might be a nice context for your argument.
>
> I hope that helps.
>
> Marcela.
>
>
>
> Em quinta-feira, 17 de novembro de 2022, Dr. Emma Briant via Air-L <
> air-l at listserv.aoir.org> escreveu:
>
> > Hi there,
> > It sounds a very reasonable concern. I would just explain this in a
> written
> > response to that point in the reviewer’s comments. You don’t necessarily
> > need to do everything each reviewer says, you just need to address their
> > concern, show you’ve considered it and explain why you chose to do what
> you
> > did, that you have good reason for taking this approach.
> > Best of luck,
> > Emma
> >
> > On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 at 20:17, Xanat Meza via Air-L <
> > air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hello everyone!
> > > I have a situation with some social media data we collected for a paper
> > > that is currently under revision.
> > > The situation is complex because we collected this data from a Facebook
> > > group dedicated to a rare medical condition back in 2017, when social
> > media
> > > data rules were not as strict as they are now. When we requested ethics
> > > review from our institution, they even told us we did not have to do
> > > anything in particular and got the study approval without much
> > difficulty.
> > > Therefore, we requested permission to the group administrators to
> collect
> > > posts, posted a permission request for the group members, asking them
> to
> > > send us a message if they wished to opt out from the study, and
> collected
> > > one thousand posts by hand. We noted that there were many researchers
> in
> > > this group and that the members participated in surveys and medical
> > studies
> > > frequently and with enthusiasm, so we thought at that time that an
> > > opting-out format would be enough. The data basically consists on user
> > > name, the texts in the posts, date and time of the posts, number of
> > > replies, and reactions. We separated the user names and replaced them
> > with
> > > alphanumeric codes.
> > > Now, a reviewer of our paper is insisting that we MUST share this data
> > > openly because it is anonymized. However, we think that it should be
> > > available upon request, as social media data management has become
> > stricter
> > > in recent years, particularly on the case of data from vulnerable
> > > communities. If we place this data related to a rare medical condition
> in
> > > an open repository, even people who are not researchers may have access
> > to
> > > it and use it to bully this Facebook group, even if in theory, they
> could
> > > not target specific users.
> > > Does anyone have any ideas or advise on how we can respond politely to
> > > this reviewer that it is safer for everyone to keep the data available
> > upon
> > > request?
> > > Xanat V. Meza
> > >
> > > Ph.D. Kansei, Behavioral and Brain SciencesUniversity of Tsukuba
> > > M.A. Media and Communication
> > > Yeungnam University
> > > B.D. Graphic Communication Design
> > > Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana
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> > --
> > Dr Emma L Briant
> >
> > Owner: Maven of Persuasion LLC
> > Fellow at Central European University's Center for Media, Data and
> Society
> > Associate at University of Cambridge, Center for Financial Reporting &
> > Accountability
> > Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/emmalbriant
> > Website: www.emma-briant.co.uk
> >
> > Author of: *Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism: Strategies for Global
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> > Manchester University Press
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