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Social media provides researchers with easy access to rich, real-time data that offers insight into both public opinion and the role of social media in public life. However, to date, good practice in analyzing social media has been led by what is technically possible and commercially viable. This chapter seeks to reverse that trend and is the result of a year-long study ‘Wisdom of the Crowd’ by Ipsos MORI, Demos, the University of Sussex and CASM Consulting to examine the ethical landscape surrounding aggregated social media research. Based on a review of the legal and market research regulatory landscape in the UK and a program of primary research with experts, members of the public and social media users, this chapter provides a series of constructive and practical recommendations on how to improve ethical standards in this field. Drawing on the context of public ethics, the recommendations provide advice to researchers, regulators, and social media organizations on how they can help to restore trust in social media research and better safeguard social media users.

This study aims to ascertain the impact of data collecting awareness on perceived information security concerns and information-sharing behavior on social networking sites.

Based on communication privacy management theory, the study forecasted the relationship between information-sharing behavior and awareness of data collecting purposes, data collection tactics and perceived security risk using structural equation modeling analysis and one-way ANOVA. The sample size of 521 young social media users in Vietnam, ages 18 to 34, was made up of 26.7% men and 73.3% women. When constructing the questionnaire survey method with lone source respondents, the individual’s unique awareness and experiences with using online social networks (OSNs) were taken into account.

The results of the investigation demonstrate a significant relationship between information-sharing and awareness of data collecting, perceptions of information security threats and behavior. Social media users have used OSN privacy settings and paid attention to the sharing restriction because they are concerned about data harvesting.

This study was conducted among young Vietnamese social media users, reflecting specific characteristics prevalent in the Vietnamese environment, and hence may be invalid in other nations’ circumstances.

Social media platform providers should improve user connectivity by implementing transparent privacy policies that allow users to choose how their data are used; have clear privacy statements and specific policies governing the use of social media users’ data that respect users’ consent to use their data; and thoroughly communicate how they collect and use user data while promptly detecting any potential vulnerabilities within their systems.

The authors ascertain that the material presented in this manuscript will not infringe upon any statutory copyright and that the manuscript will not be submitted elsewhere while under Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society review.

The ambition of human rights-based research is to generate an evidence base aligned to specific rights and rights holders. This chapter addresses the question ‘How does the ethical communication of research evidence support the achievement of this ambition?’ It outlines a Communication of Evidence For Impact (CEFI) approach that is focused on the realisation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). CEFI proposes that human rights-based communication is: a public good; a legal imperative in States that have ratified CRPD, and a moral imperative in States yet to sign or ratify; a core research competency and ethical requirement; participatory; and grounded in a culture of inclusion, intersectionality, and allyship. This chapter explores how five actors – States, research ethics committees, researchers, funders, and publishers – can each contribute to ethical communication. Recommendations are made for including and futureproofing CEFI in a disability research ethics framework.

This article aims to explore the public evaluation of the ethics of marketing tobacco in Indonesia through the theoretical lens of normative ethics.

The present study adopted a symbiotic ethical approach which combined normative and positive ethical approaches. The data was collected in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, from six focus groups and thirty photo elicitation interviews with a total of 71 participants.

The thematic analysis has identified six main themes, economic contribution of the tobacco industry, harmful nature of tobacco products, tobacco marketing targeting vulnerable groups, covering the danger of smoking, intention and integrity of tobacco marketers and infringement of law and social norms. Adopting the theoretical lens of utilitarianism, deontology, contractarianism and virtue ethics, the analysis illustrates that most participants believed that tobacco marketing practices in Indonesia are unethical.

The findings of the study were disseminated in a public engagement event to stakeholders in Yogyakarta. The findings influenced the development of No Smoking Area monitoring instrument and the introduction of “Free from Tobacco Advertisement in No Smoking Area” policy in Sleman Regency, Yogyakarta.

Indonesia, with its lenient regulatory environment, provides a unique setting for investigating public evaluation of the ethics of tobacco marketing. This is one of the first studies that investigates public evaluation of tobacco marketing ethics in Indonesia through the theoretical lens of utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics and contractarianism.

This chapter explores the ethical complexities of researching location-aware social discovery Smartphone applications (apps) and how they mediate contemporary experiences of travel. We highlight the context-specific approach required to carrying out research on Tinder, a location-aware app that enables people to connect with others in close proximity to them. By journeying through the early stages of our research project, we demonstrate how ethical considerations and dilemmas began long before our project became a project. We discuss the pulls toward data extraction/mining of user-generated content (i.e., Tinder user profiles) within digital social research and the ethical challenges of using this data for research purposes. We focus particularly on issues of informed consent, privacy, and copyright, and the differences between manual and automated data mining/extraction techniques. Excerpts from our university ethics application are included to demonstrate how our research sits uneasily within standardized ethical protocols. Our moves away from a ‘big data’ approach to more ‘traditional’ and participatory methodologies are located within questions of epistemology and ontology including our commitment to practicing a feminist research ethic. Our chapter concludes with the lessons learned in the aim to push forward with research in challenging online spaces and with new data sources.

This chapter explores how data-driven methods such as Artificial Intelligence pose real concerns for individual privacy. The current paradigm of collecting data from those using online applications and services is reinforced by significant potential profits that the private sector stands to realize by delivering a broad range of services to users faster and more conveniently. Terms of use and privacy agreements are a common source of confusion, and are written in a way that dulls their impact and dopes most into automatically accepting a certain level of risk in exchange for convenience and “free” access. Third parties, including the government, gain access to these data in numerous ways. If the erosion of individual protections of privacy and the potential dangers this poses to our autonomy and democratic ideals were not alarming enough, the digital surrogate product of “you” that is created from this paradigm might one day freely share thoughts, buying habits, and your pattern of life with whoever owns these data. We use an ethical framework to assess key factors in these issues and discuss some of the dilemmas posed by Artificial Intelligence methods, the current norm of sharing one's data, and what can be done to remind individuals to value privacy. Will our digital surrogate one day need protections too?

Large-scale data analytics have raised a number of ethical concerns. Many of these were introduced in a seminal paper by boyd and Crawford and have been developed since by others (boyd & Crawford, 2012; Lagoze, 2014; Martin, 2015; Mittelstadt, Allo, Taddeo, Wachter, & Floridi, 2016). One such concern which is frequently recognised but under-analysed is the focus on correlation of data rather than on the causative relationship between data and results. Advocates of this approach dismiss the need for an understanding of causation, holding instead that the correlation of data is sufficient to meet our needs. In crude terms, this position holds that we no longer need to know why X+Y=Z. Merely acknowledging that the pattern exists is enough.

In this chapter, the author explores the ethical implications and challenges surrounding a focus on correlation over causation. In particular, the author focusses on questions of legitimacy of data collection, the embedding of persistent bias, and the implications of future predictions. Such concerns are vital for understanding the ethical implications of, for example, the collection and use of ‘big data’ or the covert access to ‘secondary’ information ostensibly ‘publicly available’. The author’s conclusion is that by failing to consider causation, the short-term benefits of speed and cost may be countered by ethically problematic scenarios in both the short and long term.

The Millennial generation accounts for 27 per cent of the world’s population. These numbers highlight the current and future impact of Millennials on world economies, and they are arguably the most powerful consumer group. Interestingly, Millennials are also the least religious generation. Hence, there is a need to investigate further how they view the world from an ethical and religious perspective and whether their beliefs evolve over time. Therefore, the purpose of this study is, first, to compare and contrast any changes in ethical beliefs across time. Second, the study will compare and contrast any changes in religiousness across time, and finally, it explores the effects of consumers’ religiousness on ethical beliefs across time.

Using paper-based survey, the data collection took place in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2016, resulting in 1,702 young respondents in total.

The results show that consumer ethics remain constant across time. Therefore, without intervention, individuals’ ethical behavior will remain unchanged. The results also indicate that Millennials understand the boundary between legal and illegal behavior. However, when the boundary becomes unclear, such as in situations in which they see no harm, downloading pirated software and recycling, Millennials were unsure and their religiousness affected their subsequent behavior. The study makes several contributions to consumer ethics and the impact of religiousness on ethical beliefs.

This study makes several contributions to consumer ethics research, especially whether young consumers’ ethical beliefs change or remain constant across time.