Social media data

Table of contents

Social media data often contains data privacy, contract law, and copyright issues and restrictions.

Social media data such as Instagram or discussion forums are often interesting to study. However, they also come with different challenges that the researcher needs to be aware of.

Informing and consent to participate

Remember that people have the right to know that they are the subject of your research!

According to the current university instructions, you must inform the subjects of your research about the processing of their personal data and ask for their consent to participate when you collect data from social media. These instructions are in process, and if they change, the changes will be updated here.

  • Inform and ask for consent. For example, send the privacy notice, research notification, and consent form to the influencer whose channel you intend to study.
  • Privacy notice: What if you are unable to contact the participants and send the privacy notice to each of them individually?
    • If contacting each participant would require unreasonable effort, make the privacy notice publicly available. As a student, you have a personal JYU website and JYU SharePoint that can be used to publish the privacy notice.
    • Then, for example, if you are studying the comments section on some public social media account, link the privacy notice to the comments.
  • If participation in the research deviates from the principle of informed consent, an ethical review is required.

Legal basis for personal data processing

The privacy notice always includes the legal basis for processing personal data. If your thesis is a scientific work, the grounds for processing are “public interest”. In the case of a non-scientific work, consent is usually used as the basis for processing. These are described in the previous section of this study material and on the university's website in the student guidelines section Legal basis for personal data processing and consent.  

If data is from social media and consent cannot be requested, consent cannot be used as the legal basis for processing. In this case, "legitimate interest" can be used as the legal basis. It requires a so-called balance test. Legitimate interest cannot be used as a basis if the social media data is collected directly from people, e.g. by asking them questions in a discussion group.

Consent to participate and consent as a legal basis are two separate things.

Tips:

  • The writings on the Suomi24 discussion forum are available through the Language Bank of Finland. The Language Bank is an archive where various language materials are stored.
  • Newspaper and magazine articles’ comments are classified as opinion pieces. They are not seen as personal data and using them as research data does not require processing of personal data. In other words, the published comments on the newspapers’ and magazines’ own online platforms and apps are part of the published article.

These instructions also apply to public figures, such as politicians, or corporate accounts. 

Research ethics

When social media is used as research material, it inevitably involves ethical research questions. This is the case even if the material is publicly displayed on the internet.

Ethical challenges:

  • Consider what kind of risks or harms the processing of personal data can cause? Are there ethical problems related to the use of the data? Typically you should not research closed groups due to ethical challenges in your thesis.
  • The use of social media as research data is in itself an ethical challenge, as content produced for social media is not intended for research.
  • Can persons be harmed if, for example, their social media posts are studied and highlighted in the thesis and thus brought to the attention of a new audience? Consider carefully whether you can use direct quotes, as the post will then be easy to find by googling.
  • Consider how sensitive the contents are. Examples of particularly sensitive topics: criminal convictions, drug use, financial problems, mental health problems, controversial political opinions and activism. What kind of harm or damage could persons then suffer as a result of being the subject of the investigation? It is recommended to avoid such social media topics in theses, as the research could then involve ethical challenges of such magnitude that they cannot be solved within the framework of the thesis.
  • Do not investigate closed groups that require you to request an access to them, as this would be ethically very challenging. If, on the other hand, it is, for example, a Facebook group that is open so that without logging in, anyone can read the content, it would be possible to study the group. Still, consider the ethical challenges and, for example, questions related to informing people whose posts or account you study.
  • Ethical issues related to social media data are written about, for example, in the EU guideline Ethics in Social Sciences and Humanities

Social media data often requires an impact assessment, especially if the topic is sensitive or you cannot inform.

How about the Terms of service? 

  • For Facebook and Instagram, the definition is particularly challenging due to frequently changing terms of service.
  • Check the terms of service. They are subject to change, so always check for the latest version. What the Terms of Use say about data storage, content publicity, content sharing, copyright, and more.

Not all information found on the Internet is public. Consider on a case-by-case basis and consider from an ethical perspective.