[Air-L] About social media data availability

[Sam Srauy]

Hi Xanat,

I think you’re right to be concerned about the reviewer’s demand. I would also not feel right about sharing the data. Even if we assume that the data cannot be used to trace back to the group or posters, (which is a very big assumption,) the deal you made with the admins and the group members is that you would only use the data for this study. I think you would be quite right to decline and state you don’t have expressed permission from your participants or your institution to make the data publicly available. 

Would the editor be someone who could intervene?

Best,
Sam

____
Sam Srauy, PhD
Associate Professor
Digital Media and Production Coordinator
Oakland University
Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations

Oakland University resides on the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Anishinaabe, known as the Three Fires Confederacy, comprised of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. The land was ceded in the 1807 Treaty of Detroit and makes up southeast Michigan.
In recognizing the history and respecting the sovereignty of Michigan’s Indian Nations, Oakland University honors the heritage of Indigenous communities and their significant role in shaping the course of this region. Further, we recognize the wrongs done to those forcibly removed from their Homelands and commit to fostering an environment of inclusion that is responsive to the needs of First Peoples through our words, policies, and actions. 
The preservation and perpetuation of customs and traditions of Indigenous nations are essential to our shared cultural heritage. A deep understanding of Native peoples’ past and present informs the teaching, research, and community engagement of the university in its ongoing effort to elevate the dignity of all people and serve as shared stewards of the land.


> On Nov 17, 2022, at 8:09 PM, 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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