New journal article: Remember the Human: A Systematic Review of Ethical Considerations in Reddit Research

A new journal article on research ethics and ethical recommendations to consider when conducting research on Reddit has come out. This builds on an earlier conference paper I contributed to with North American colleagues. Also, third systematic review!

Abstract

Reddit is one of the world’s most prominent social media platforms, and also a valuable source of data for internet researchers. However, working with this kind of data also presents novel ethical complications for researchers, including issues around privacy, vulnerable populations, and unintended consequences. This paper describes an analysis of 134 papers that rely on Reddit data while also including some discussion of ethical implications and/or considerations by the researchers. Our analysis of these papers reveals common ethical issues and ethically motivated methodological decisions, as described by the researchers themselves, while also exposing some gaps for further ethical contemplation for researchers relying on Reddit data. Based on these findings, we close with a set of recommendations for ethically-informed methods and reflection for researchers working with social data.

You can read the open access article here.