The first being that confidentiality is not merely a matter of shielding research participants’ identities. Additionally, Zimmer found it to be a breach of research ethics because subjects were not provided access to view the data to correct for errors or request the removal of unwanted information (for further discussion of this case, see Zimmer 2010) (Fig. Secondly, they assumed the research ethics implications had been sufficiently observed by consulting the college’s IRB and taking steps to anonymize the data.Īddressing both arguments, Zimmer argued that extensive collection of personal data over a long period of time, made publicly available for the purpose of social networking only, by subjects whose consent was neither sought nor received does constitute a violation of their privacy (Box 7.1). Firstly, they believed that even if the data set were ‘cracked’ (allowing individual subjects to be identified), the privacy of the subjects would not be violated because the data was already public in the first place. In a discussion of this case, Zimmer ( 2010) observed that the researchers who initialized the project made two assumptions.
DEFINE BREACH OF CONFIDENTIALITY OFFLINE
Soon thereafter, it was established that the source of the data was very likely Harvard College, and although no individual subjects were identified at that point, the dataset was taken offline as a precaution. However, just four days after the data’s release, Fred Stutzman, a PhD student, questioned the non-identifiability of the data, writing: ‘A friend network can be thought of as a fingerprint it is likely that no two networks will be exactly similar, meaning individuals may be able to be identified in the dataset post-hoc’ (quoted in Zimmer 2010, p. Convinced that this would ensure confidentiality, the data set was released in 2008 as the first installment of a data sharing project purported to run until 2011. Also, they demanded that other researchers who wished to use the data for secondary analysis would sign a ‘terms and conditions for use’ agreement that prohibited any attempts to re-identify the subjects.
Notably, they did not seek consent from the individual users, although steps were taken to ensure that the identity and privacy of the students remained protected, including the removal of identifying information (such as the names of the students).
The researchers had requested and obtained permission to utilize the data for research purposes from Facebook, the college involved, as well as the college’s Institutional Review Board (IRB).
The data haul included demographic, relational, and cultural information for each individual, and the interested sociologists intended to use it in generating multiple future research projects. In 2006, just a few years after Facebook entered the public sphere, a group of researchers downloaded the publicly available data for an entire cohort of some 1700 freshmen students at an undisclosed US college. Since the launch of Facebook as a (commercial) social media platform, its potential as a treasure trove of data on the dynamics of social networks and both online and offline behavior was quickly recognized by sociologists.
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