Can social media data be freely used? Participants’ ethical perceptions toward using their social media data in research

Abstract

In the big data environment, various systems and platforms have provided billions of data points to researchers. The large amount of user data on social media platforms has become a source for research data for many kinds of research. However, few scholars realize the ethical risks in the collection and utilization of social media data, and many ignore the ethical needs of users themselves. Users’ concerns should be considered when formulating ethical guidelines. This study takes Sina Microblog (the world’s largest Chinese social media platform) users as the research subject, hoping to provide data from Chinese users and provide evidence for differences in users’ ethical perceptions in different cultural contexts. Within our survey sample, few users had previously known that their microblogs could be collected and used by researchers, and the majority believed that researchers should not use their microblogs without consent. We also found differences in cognition regarding ethical issues in social media data research across groups.