Photo credit: “Engine” by fatedsnowfox
Data ethics
In March 2017, Libby Bishop, our former Producer Relations Manager and expert on the ethics of re-using data and informed consent at the UK Data Service, discussed the ethical considerations and the importance of setting standards when using social media data. Libby focused on how
“the analysis of social media data presents a number of canada rcs data challenges, including ethical and legal ones associated with consent and anonymisation.”
Libby pointed us to our Big data and data sharing: Ethical issues guide, which covers issues in anonymising Tweets because Twitter’s Terms and Conditions prohibit modifying content. Although Twitter may be viewed as a public platform, survey analysis by the Social Data Science Lab showed that Tweeters did not want their content used, even for research, if they were identifiable.
Tweet Publication Decision Flowchart
Professor Matthew Williams from the Social Data Science Lab‘s Tweet Publication Decision Flowchart, handy tool for researchers wishing to use Twitter data.
Data use
In one of our early posts from March 2015 on data use, Jennifer Mindell, Reader in Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology & Public Health at UCL, discussed the role of the Health Survey for England in informing obesity policy. for the analyses which identified obesity as one of the main risk factors behind the differences in prevalence of multiple lifestyle risk factors by age and by socio-economic position.