Collect and Handle Personal Social Media Data. Ethical Issues of an Empirical Internet Research

Online users’ digital traces provide valuable information and empirical evidence, but Internet research requires scientific rigor in accessing and managing User Generated Contents (UGCs). The article challenges these practices and advocates for a reflexive approach to social media research ethics. Although platforms offer viable access, utilizing such data can intrude on subjects’ private lives. Defining responsibilities toward data and subjects is crucial when studying online contents, such as Instagram stories and Facebook posts. The subject’s centrality and ethical implications becomes particularly significant in social inquiry, where the object is closely tied to actively signifying subjects and social relations mediated by institutions or technologies. The paper explores ethical issues in a concrete research project, “7 friends for 7 days”, and presents alternative research practices for observing and analyzing online content within the post-API research context. It discusses ethical challenges in Internet research, focusing on social media data, and examines a study that analyzed user-generated content through human-type coding. The paper reflects on the ethical considerations in fabricating research evidence, particularly regarding UGC published on personal social media platforms and the critical awareness of those involved in observing and disseminating such data.