Large data changes in social science research process scholars face moral test

Jeffrey Hankock, Professor of Cornell University, USA

Tencent technology News Facebook, Google (Weibo), Amazon and other technology start-ups have collected a large number of users ' personal data, which makes them extremely excited, because it is enough to change the course of their research in the social sciences.

Compared to the past, which had to be collected through field surveys and interviews, scholars now sit in front of the screen and immediately access millions of of the Internet user data. This has become the forefront of research in the current social sciences: Academics use data from Internet users who may never know they have been targeted, let alone consulted.

"This is a new era of social science research," Jeffrey Hankock Jeffrey, a professor of communications and information Science at Cornell University, said. This is like the birth of a microscope to the development of chemical science to play a role in promoting. ”

Facebook experiment raises controversy

But it has also sparked some controversy. Facebook published a study in June this year, when the world's largest social networking site tuned in and dealt with algorithms for the release of nearly 700,000 unsuspecting users, so that people would see a few positive or negative posts. The report immediately sparked controversy in public. And Hancock is just one of the creators of the report.

Now, the researchers at Hancock and other universities and companies are faced with yet another conundrum: how to develop ethical guidelines for doing this kind of social science research. In an interview after Facebook published his research report, Hancock said he would help draft and develop guidelines by convening a series of seminars for academics, business researchers and government departments.

Academics from MIT and Stanford are preparing seminars and conferences on the topic, and several professional journals are also working on the issue of ethical issues in the use of data.

As a quasi-independent division of Microsoft, Microsoft Works has played an important role in such a symposium. The Institute held a symposium with Hancock last month on Facebook's research and provided academics with a software tool to help them conduct consumer surveys of ethical issues that have been encountered in the early days of a study.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulates the company's behavior in terms of privacy issues and fair treatment of Internet users. Although the FTC declined to comment on Facebook's research report, FTC Chairman Idis Lamireze (Edith Ramirez) was concerned about the use of user data. "Consumers should be on the initiative when it comes to the use of their own data," Ramirez said. They don't want to be left out in the corner and shudder to learn how to use the data. ”

Facebook has apologized for its research but declined to comment further.

Many internet companies do similar research in-house and aim to refine their products, such as testing whether users are interested in news from a Facebook source, whether they prefer to watch video, and how to make Google's search results more accurate.

Internet companies, however, often work with academic institutions to study more meaningful social issues, and scientists are eager for more ambitious research.

Facebook sent a message to the user in 2010 about the U.S. presidential campaign

The emotional experiment that Facebook carried out was initiated by enterprise data scientist Adam Cramer Adam d.i Kramer, and Hancock and another researcher, Jemi Gouilloyres Jamie Guillory, also took part in the experiment. In the experiment, Facebook's data scientists studied users ' dynamic messages and concluded that more enduring emotions such as happiness and sadness could spread between social networks.

In another well-known experiment, Facebook sent a poll message to 61 million American users during the 2010 U.S. presidential campaign. Some users also saw a list of Facebook friends who had already voted. The researchers found that this particular social reminder would allow more Americans to vote in the presidential election. The study also allowed some scientists to think that Facebook had the ability to influence the outcome of the presidential campaign.

The American dating site OkCupid has also recently launched several tests, including analyzing the depth of the dialog after removing the user's picture for 7 hours. In addition, the site has temporarily changed the data rating system, to recommend to users some of the less matching date, to see if they affect the user's impression of each other.

Lack of federal law

Similar experiments have been provoking controversy: what kind of experiments need to get user authorization ahead of time? How can companies determine that consumers have the right to know about the use of personal information? Who decides the rules of the game?

Many social science researchers have said that existing federal laws do not cover a wide range of Internet user research, nor do they provide appropriate guidelines for such research. For Internet projects sponsored by university researchers, internet companies offer user reviews that help them complete project research.

Sinan Aral, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Shinan Ara that any new guidelines must be considered. "We need to know how to develop guidelines without impeding these studies, because these studies can help us better understand human behavior," he says. "MIT will host a major conference on digital experimentation in October this year, and Yala is preparing a symposium on Internet ethics at the conference."

Guiding principles need to be gradual

Microsoft Research Senior Researcher Mary Grey

Mary L. Gray, an assistant professor at Indiana State University's Media academy and a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, has conducted extensive studies on ethical issues in the field of social science (Mary Grey). She has repeatedly said that researchers who conduct digital experiments are rarely subject to other external principles. Other researchers at Gray and Microsoft Research have spent two years setting up an ethics advisory board and launching ethical training programs for researchers at Microsoft Labs. Now, Grayshon with Hancock to extend this ethical principle to a larger area of research.

"If everyone can do the right thing, then we will never hurt anyone," he said. "But she recommended a simple test to the researchers: if you're afraid to ask for permission from a subject in the process of completing the study, you have to consider the ethical issues at a deeper level."

While Hancock argues that companies are reluctant to be involved in activities that limit their ability to innovate, any guiding principle must be "effective, fast, understandable and gradual".

Some researchers point to the apparent risk of Facebook's research. But Hancock said the researchers did not realise that a slight adjustment to the Facebook source would also make some users feel that their rights have been violated.