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Research Ethics and Public Trust, Preconditions for Continued Growth of Internet Mediated Research Public Confidence in Internet Mediate Research
Abstract
In this paper we argue for the position that responsible safeguards for privacy and ethical treatment of human data are of vital importance to retain the public confidence and trust that is necessary for the development and future success of internet mediated research (IMR). We support our position based on the high level of popular and media attention that is currently directed at IMR, which in combination with the relative uncertainties that still exist around the ethics of various IMR methods, raises the risk that IMR might succumb to a public backlash of similar proportions to the controversy that hit genetically modified (GM) crops in Europe. Based on the lessons that came out of the GM crops controversy we discuss the ethics requirements and challenges that must be met in order to retain the public trust in IMR. We end our argument by briefly reviewing a couple of examples of " privacy protecting architectures " that are being developed for IMR.
... Researchers are increasingly able to access information in contexts where individuals may be unaware that personal information even exists in retrievable form, or that when linked with other forms of personal data, it may be possible to identify who they are. Similarly, harvesting sensitive information from public-private environments such as social media may raise ethical issues, especially for research involving vulnerable populations who may have limited understanding of the implications of disclosing personal information on these platforms (Andalibi et al. 2016;Beddows 2008;Calear and Christensen 2010;Gustafson and Woodworth 2014;Koene et al. 2015;Lunnay et al. 2014;McKee 2013;Whitehead 2007). ...
... The potential for identification of individual human subjects associated with genomic information has led to developments which will ensure secure data sharing environments controlled by access committees are established as research is reviewed (Barsh et al. 2015;Kaye 2012). A variety of privacy protecting data structures are being developed by internet-based researchers as a way of anonymising data before researchers are able to access it (Koene et al. 2015). One of a number of approaches to resolving ethical issues associated with data sharing is the establishment of a Code of Conduct for genomic and health related research "to enable effective and responsible sharing of genomic and clinical data and to catalyze data sharing projects that drive and demonstrate the value of data sharing" (Knoppers 2014, p. 1e). ...
... Issues of data governance are critical for ensuring that research that involves collecting or accessing digital data, is publically trusted. The safeguards established in data governance systems need to fully respect and protect individual privacy (Koene et al. 2015). Academic institutions, industry, and government have yet to fully develop integrated endto-end systems for data governance and custodianship of digital data, including institutional information protection systems and ways of managing accountability (Fisher and Fortmann 2010;Rosenbaum 2010). ...
The proliferation of digital data and internet-based research technologies is transforming the research landscape, and researchers and research ethics communities are struggling to respond to the ethical issues being raised. This paper discusses the findings from a collaborative project that explored emerging ethical issues associated with the expanding use of digital data for research. The project involved consulting with researchers from a broad range of disciplinary fields. These discussions identified five key sets of issues and informed the development of guidelines orientated to meet the needs of researchers and ethics committee members. We argue that establishing common approaches to assessing ethical risks of research involving digital data will promote consistency in the ethical standards for research, enable the smooth functioning of ethics committees, and sustain public confidence in research. We conclude with recommendations for the development of educational resources for ethics committees, data management guidelines and further public education.
... Over time much has been learnt through trial and error. As a consequence, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have changed their terms of service with much tighter control over external research [76,77]. However, this review does not suggest that users feel this is the best way forward. ...
... Rooted within the concepts of risk to users are the issues of privacy and traceability or anonymity of the poster [34,38,39,41,48,[71][72][73]77,81,[87][88][89][90][91][92][93]. Whereas some respondents were happy for use of anonymous posts, others wanted to be cited (as is the case for published works). ...
... Researchers should consider the type of research (such as aggregate, qualitative); the nature of their topic (whether sensitive or trivial); as well as issues of anonymization, confidentiality, informed consent, privacy, and the benefits and risks involved. The ability to undertake Internet research may depend on the level of trust and confidence the public have in the research being undertaken when people choose to contribute to studies or make posts publically available [77]. Koene [77] considers a possible revolt with a call for a public backlash and boycott of Internet-mediated research. ...
Background
Although primarily used for social networking and often used for social support and dissemination, data on social media platforms are increasingly being used to facilitate research. However, the ethical challenges in conducting social media research remain of great concern. Although much debated in the literature, it is the views of the public that are most pertinent to inform future practice.
Objective
The aim of our study was to ascertain attitudes on the ethical considerations of using social media as a data source for research as expressed by social media users and researchers.
Methods
A systematic review was conducted, wherein 16 databases and 2 Internet search engines were searched in addition to handsearching, reference checking, citation searching, and contacting authors and experts. Studies that conducted any qualitative methods to collect data on attitudes on the ethical implications of research using social media were included. Quality assessment was conducted using the quality of reporting tool (QuaRT) and findings analyzed using inductive thematic synthesis.
Results
In total, 17 studies met the inclusion criteria. Attitudes varied from overly positive with people expressing the views about the essential nature of such research for the public good, to very concerned with views that social media research should not happen. Underlying reasons for this variation related to issues such as the purpose and quality of the research, the researcher affiliation, and the potential harms. The methods used to conduct the research were also important. Many respondents were positive about social media research while adding caveats such as the need for informed consent or use restricted to public platforms only.
Conclusions
Many conflicting issues contribute to the complexity of good ethical practice in social media research. However, this should not deter researchers from conducting social media research. Each Internet research project requires an individual assessment of its own ethical issues. Guidelines on ethical conduct should be based on current evidence and standardized to avoid discrepancies between, and duplication across, different institutions, taking into consideration different jurisdictions.
... We note at this stage that the collection of data from social media has raised questions of ethical concern among the research community. More specifically, some scholars are concerned about the confidentiality of information gathered from human subjects, as well as the public confidence and trust in researchers' work (e.g., Koene et al., 2015). While acknowledging the importance of these types of concerns, we are proponents of the work from, among others, Moreno and colleagues (2013), who defined a human subject as "a living individual about whom an investigator obtains data through interaction with the individual or identifiable private information" (p. ...
Background/Context: Teachers and educational professionals can draw on (informal) networks to foster their professional development. Moreover, a growing number of studies have shown that teachers use social networking sites (SNSs), such as Twitter, to keep up to date with the latest news on education and share resources with colleagues. Additionally, social capital can help to explain potential benefits of networking and has already been used to better understand professional development.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the informal networking of educators in SNSs. To achieve this goal, we first indicate how the concept of social capital can be used to assess communication flows within SNSs. Then, we consider social networking metrics and question whether they are as relevant in an online realm. Next, we argue for an adjusted brokerage index, namely the social brokerage index (SBI), which can help to shed light on how brokerage positions are shaped by different people within SNSs. Finally, we provide empirical data from six educational hashtag conversations on Twitter to test the relevance and applicability of the SBI.
Research Design: Using Twitter data from six (international) hashtag conversations between teachers and educational professionals, we apply social network analysis methods to assess the potential formation of social capital. In applying this method to the Twitter conversations in question, we first collected data on the Twitter users who contributed to the applicable hashtag conversation. Subsequently, we built directed unweighted one-mode networks based on mentions, and replies matrices. Second, we computed the in-degree, out-degree, and overall degree centrality metrics of all users (nodes) taking part in the applicable hashtag discussions. Additionally, we also determined users’ brokerage positions, which is another indicator for social capital formation within networks. Questioning the relevance of these metrics in the context of SNSs, we propose the SBI, which departs from previous work that has largely been framed by considerations around general account characteristics (follower/following ratio), general communication patterns (retweet/mention ratio), or in-degree metrics.
Conclusions/Recommendations: Based on our findings, we believe that our proposed SBI has added value to the analyses of network behavior beyond the scope of Twitter. More specifically, the SBI could help to understand what type of discussions draw what type of participants and thereby shed more light on how SNSs contribute to social capital formation among teachers and educational professionals.
... It is clear that public trust in IAS cannot simply be assumed [31][32][33]; to do so could risk the kind of public rejection of a new technology seen (in Europe) with genetically modified foods in the 1990s [34]. Proactive actions to build public trust are needed, including, for example, the creation of a 'machine intelligence commission' as argued by Mulgan [6]; such a commission would lead public debates, identify risks and make recommendations to Parliament, for new regulation or regulatory bodies, for instance, and recommend independent mechanisms for responsible disclosure. ...
This paper explores the question of ethical governance for robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. We outline a roadmap—which links a number of elements, including ethics, standards, regulation, responsible research and innovation, and public engagement—as a framework to guide ethical governance in robotics and AI. We argue that ethical governance is essential to building public trust in robotics and AI, and conclude by proposing five pillars of good ethical governance.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Governing artificial intelligence: ethical, legal, and technical opportunities and challenges’.
... [9]). As we have argued in our previous position paper [10], this apparent imbalance in research efforts, seemingly focused on a corporate agenda, is exactly the kind of narrative that led to the GMO crop controversy in the EU in the 1990s which dramatically impacted the funding and public support for the Biosciences. In order to avoid such a public backlash against Internet research it is necessary to show that the research community is not solely interested in furthering a corporate agenda, but rather is seriously engaged with identifying and improving the societal impact of Internet research and innovation. ...
Online search engines, social media, news sites and retailers are all investing heavily in the development of ever more refined information filtering to optimally tune their services to the specific demands of their individual users and customers. In this position paper we examine the privacy consequences of user profile models that are used to achieve this information personalization, the lack of transparency concerning the filtering choices and the ways in which personalized services impact the user experience. Based on these considerations we argue that the Internet research community has a responsibility to increase its efforts to investigate the means and consequences of personalized information filtering.
... More specifically, some scholars are concerned about the confidentiality of information gathered from human subjects, as well as the public confidence and trust in researchers' work (e.g. Koene et al., 2015). While acknowledging the importance of these types of concerns, we are proponents of the work by, among others, Moreno, Goniu, Moreno, and Diekema (2013), who define a human subject as "a living individual about whom an investigator obtains data through interaction with the individual or identifiable private information" (p. ...
... [9]). As we have argued in our previous position paper [10], this apparent imbalance in research efforts, seemingly focused on a corporate agenda, is exactly the kind of narrative that led to the GMO crop controversy in the EU in the 1990s which dramatically impacted the funding and public support for the Biosciences. In order to avoid such a public backlash against Internet research it is necessary to show that the research community is not solely interested in furthering a corporate agenda, but rather is seriously engaged with identifying and improving the societal impact of Internet research and innovation. ...
Online search engines, social media, news sites and retailers are all investing heavily in the development of ever more refined information filtering to optimally tune their services to the specific demands of their individual users and customers. In this position paper we examine the privacy consequences of user profile models that are used to achieve this information personalization, the lack of transparency concerning the filtering choices and the ways in which personalized services impact the user experience. Based on these considerations we argue that the Internet research community has a responsibility to increase its efforts to investigate the means and consequences of personalized information filtering.
... To understand public literacy about the ocean, it is also important to identify where people acquire information about marine issues. Television and the Internet, for example, are popular used sources for information on environmental topics, but many citizens and scientists question the reliability of information provided in these media [25][26][27]. The Internet, for example, offers excellent resources for learning about ocean and coastal issues and impacts of specific human activities (e.g., Sea Grant and NOAA websites) e.g., [28][29][30]. ...
This article examines coastal residents' awareness and knowledge about impacts of seawater desalination on marine ecosystems Carlsbad, California. The paper explores to what extent sociodemographics, motivational factors, and information use shape public awareness and self-assessed and factual knowledge. Data was collected using a mail survey (n=330) from a random sample of residents in Carlsbad. Both self-assessed and factual knowledge about the desalination plant and its impacts on marine ecosystem were low, with only two of 11 factual questions answered correctly by more than 50% of respondents. Gender, frequency of ocean use, and use of distinct information sources correlated positively with greater factual knowledge. Education, age, time of residency in local community, membership in an NGO, and place attachment to marine areas did not increase factual knowledge. Findings also demonstrate that knowledge shaped attitudes towards the seawater desalination plant as greater knowledge about marine impacts reduced support.
... Leaving aside the obvious ethical concerns relating to the use of 'tracking cookies', tracking of user activity on the service site itself can also produce highly detailed personality profiles, especially when the service provider is a search engine or social media site that is heavily accessed by the user and provides a wide diversity of services. In essence, the process of creating a user profile for the service personalization involves exactly the kinds of privacy invasive data mining that we have previously argued to require strictly maintained informed consent procedures to maintain proper research ethics when employing such data mining for academic research [6,7]. It is therefore ethically highly problematic that the need to maintain an advantage over competing services frequently results in service providers choosing not to inform their users about the personalization methods that are being used. ...
Personal service customization, or personalization, is one of the core tools that are being used by on-line providers of information services such as search engines, social media, news sites and product recommender systems to optimize the individual user experience in hopes of attracting and keeping users. In this paper we will examine the user profile models that are used to achieve this information personalization. From a citizen centric perspective, our concerns focus on the degree of privacy intrusion that is implicitly required to determine the parameter settings of the information filter profile and the ethical implications of the personal behavior predicting properties of the user model itself.
Significance
We show, via a massive ( N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.
Success Factors in Product Innovation
R. G. Cooper and E. J. Kleinschmidt
Note: This is an old article and has been updated a number of times since. See Cooper, Robert G. (2018), “The Drivers of Success in New-Product Development,” Industrial Marketing Management, on-line at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2018.07.005 and in print in 2019.
Also: R.G. Cooper, Winning at New Products, 5thedition, paperback book, on Amazon.
Management of the 1980s and 1990s faces a dilemma in product innovation. On the one hand, there is increasing pressure to develop and launch more new products; Booz-Allen and Hamilton report that firms expect new products to grow from 33% of corporate sales to 40% in the 198Os, and that the number of new products introduced will double [l]. On the other hand, product in novation remains a very high-risk endeavor, fraught with difficulties and littered with failures. New product failure rates remain high (estimated to be about 33% at launch, while almost half the resources that U.S. industry devotes to product innovation is spent on innovation duds-products that fail commercially or never make it to the marketplace! If businesses are to survive and prosper, managers must become more astute at selecting new product winners, and at effectively managing the new product process from product idea through to launch. These two challenges better project selection and more effective process management-point to the need for a greater understanding of the components of success in product innovation. We set out to gather evidence to help answer the question, “What makes a new product a success?” by looking at the new product experiences of a large number of firms. This article reports on the study’s conclusions.
Just as a stream of genetically modifiedcrops looked set to be approved for commercialproduction in the European Union, the approvalprocedure appears to have become bogged down onceagain by disagreements among and within member states.Old controversies have resurfaced in new forms. Theintractability of the issues suggests that theregulatory procedure has had too narrow a focus,leaving outside its boundary many of the morefundamental aspects that cause people in the EuropeanUnion most concern. Regulators have come underconsiderable pressure to ensure their risk assessmentdecisions are soundly science-based. Ethical issueshave been deemed to lie beyond the scope of theregulatory procedure, as a matter to be consideredseparately by professional ethicists. Yet it has beensuggested that all environmental controversies at rootinvolve disputes about fundamental ethical principles.This paper examines how the ethical issues arecurrently suppressed or sidelined. It discusses how anappreciation of systems thinking and a check on thevalues that underpin decisions, using boundary testingquestions, might contribute to a more constructiveregulatory dialogue, with ethical issues considered asintegral in a way that takes better account ofpeople's concerns.
Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and recently released on the Internet is user No. 4417749. The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher's anonymity, but it was not much of a shield. No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period on topics ranging from "numb fingers" to "60 single men" to "dog that urinates on everything." And search by search, click by click, the identity of AOL user No. 4417749 became easier to discern. There are queries for "landscapers in Lilburn, Ga," several people with the last name Arnold and "homes sold in shadow lake subdivision gwinnett county georgia." It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga., frequently researches her friends' medical ailments and loves her three dogs. "Those are my searches," she said, after a reporter read part of the list to her. AOL removed the search data from its site over the weekend and apologized for its release, saying it was an unauthorized move by a team that had hoped it would benefit academic researchers. But the detailed records of searches conducted by Ms. Arnold and 657,000 other Americans, copies of which continue to circulate online, underscore how much people unintentionally reveal about themselves when they use search engines — and how risky it can be for companies like AOL, Google and Yahoo to compile such data. Those risks have long pitted privacy advocates against online marketers and other Internet companies seeking to profit from the Internet's unique ability to track the comings and goings of users, allowing for more focused and therefore more lucrative advertising. But the unintended consequences of all that data being compiled, stored and cross-linked are what Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy rights group in Washington, called "a ticking privacy time bomb." Mr. Rotenberg pointed to Google's own joust earlier this year with the Justice Department over a subpoena for some of its search data. The company successfully fended off the agency's demand in court, but several other search companies, including AOL, complied. The Justice Department sought the information to help it defend a challenge to a law that is meant to shield children from sexually explicit material.
This paper introduces a new information technology: ma3tch (autonomous anonymous analysis). Ma3tch enables virtual information integration to build a 'dynamic networked collective intelligence' without infringing upon security, confidentiality, privacy and/or data protection regulations. It provides organizations with information and knowledge advantages. The ma3tch technology is empowered by a decentralized information oriented architecture: a 'privacy by design' framework that uses distributed agents to facilitate decentralized but integrated information access, processing and analysis. It shapes a 'virtual information cloud' between autonomous organizations that enables secure, integral and intelligent real time information analysis. Relevant information and knowledge distributed between autonomous organizations is automatically detected and applied throughout the network as soon as it emerges. The dynamic design principles allow practically any type of (cross domain) information to be virtually integrated: government, commercial, intelligence, law enforcement, financial, telecom, biomedical, compliance, etc., without infringing privacy, confidentiality, security or data protection rules and regulations. It advances both privacy AND knowledge beyond conventional limitations.
The new product process comprises the set of activities that move the product from idea to launch. The authors investigated the new product process activities of firms in Australia, England and Belgium. Objectives of the research were to determine—what activities are undertaken in the new product process? How proficiently are these activities performed and what improvements are needed? whether the sorts of activities undertaken and their proficiency affect project success or failure. Since these activities are largely under the control of management, the deeper is our understanding of new product process activities, the greater the scope for improved product innovation management.
The increase in public concern regarding food hazards and decline in public trust in food risk regulators suggests that there is a need to identify the actual concerns held by the public regarding specific food hazards in order to develop effective risk communication. In this paper we report the findings of semi-structured interviews, using the laddering technique, that aimed to identify the concerns held by the public with regard to five specific food hazards (BSE, genetic modification of food, high fat diets, pesticide residues in food and Salmonella food poisoning). It was found that most of the identified characteristics and concerns were unique to specific food hazards, though some were shared. The findings were supported in a validation study using a more representative sample of the public. The discussion argues that risk messages addressing these specific concerns will be more relevant to the public than general messages, which may lead to more effective risk communication.
Operators of online social networks are increasingly sharing potentially sensitive information about users and their relationships with advertisers, application developers, and data-mining researchers. Privacy is typically protected by anonymization, i.e., removing names, addresses, etc. We present a framework for analyzing privacy and anonymity in social networks and develop a new re-identification algorithm targeting anonymized social-network graphs. To demonstrate its effectiveness on real-world networks, we show that a third of the users who can be verified to have accounts on both Twitter, a popular microblogging service, and Flickr, an online photo-sharing site, can be re-identified in the anonymous Twitter graph with only a 12% error rate. Our de-anonymization algorithm is based purely on the network topology, does not require creation of a large number of dummy "sybil" nodes, is robust to noise and all existing defenses, and works even when the overlap between the target network and the adversary's auxiliary information is small.
This paper aims to examine some of the reasons behind public controversy associated with the introduction of genetically modified foods in Europe the 1990s. The historical background to the controversy is provided to give context. The issue of public acceptance of genetically modified foods, and indeed the emerging biosciences more generally, is considered in the context of risk perceptions and attitudes, public trust in regulatory institutions, scientists, and industry, and the need to develop communication strategies that explicitly include public concerns rather than exclude them. Increased public participation has been promoted as a way of increasing trust in institutional practices associated with the biosciences, although questions still arise as to how to best utilise the outputs of such exercises in policy development. This issue will become more of a priority as decision-making systems become more transparent and open to public scrutiny. The results are discussed in the context of risk assessment and risk management, and recommendations for future research are made. In particular, it is recommended that new methods are developed in order to integrate public values more efficaciously into risk analysis processes, specifically with respect to the biosciences and to technology implementation in general.
