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Scientists are spying on your tweets. Is it ethical?

Scientists are spying on your tweets. Is it ethical?

Casey Fiesler
Binoculars

With the explosion of social media has come a feast of data for scientists to analyze. But with this opportunity have come sticky questions about what鈥檚 legal, what鈥檚 ethical and how privacy should be protected. 

Casey Fiesler, assistant professor of information science, is working to find answers and develop guidance in a field so new it lacks standards. 

In one study, she found that 62 percent of Twitter users have no idea scientists study their tweets. Most assume it鈥檚 not allowed. (It is.) She鈥檚 now studying what companies鈥 fine print says about sharing data for research, how such research affects vulnerable communities and why certain studies bother people more than others. 

鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to suggest we shouldn鈥檛 be doing research using Twitter data at all,鈥 Fiesler says, 鈥渂ut just because data is easy to get doesn鈥檛 mean we should be able to do whatever we like with it.鈥

Principal investigator
Casey Fiesler

Funding
National Science Foundation (NSF)

Collaboration + support
Information Science; University of Kentucky