[ecrea] CFP for Special Issue of Social Media and Society: Ethics as Method in an Era of Big Data

Ethic as method in an era of big data

Special Issue of Social Media + Society

We invite contributions to a special issue of Social Media + Society
devoted to a critical examination of the future of Internet research
practices in the era of computational or big data analytics, with
particular focus on how ethics can be configured through methodological
approaches.

Although we are promiscuously catholic as far as theoretical approaches
are concerned, we are especially interested in contributions that pay
specific attention to the socio-technical and political economic
dimensions of “platform politics” and their ethical implications for
research practice, as elaborated in the following questions.  These
questions constitute only some of the possible entry points into the
discussion and we welcome other ideas:

  *

    Ethics have been traditionally situated as prior to methods; that
    is, as philosophical groundings that guide practice. If we situate
    method in the same time/space as ethics, would a different set of
    practices emerge? This question becomes relevant in an era when
    ethics are being reconfigured to better meet the contingencies of
    particular digital situations. For example, in situations wherein
    algorithms function with similar agency to humans, our
    methodological choices for deciding what counts as data or what
    might be considered a participant in a social interaction have
    ethical consequences. If every method decision is an ethics decision
    and vice versa, how might we rethink the relationship between the
    methodological and axiological?

  *

    Ethics are a series of activities that follow from a particular
    ethos. Etymologically, ethos is about emplacement and orientation.
    If we take this as a starting point, where is the place from which
    ethics emerge? What are the ethics of abstraction within this
    broader understanding of ethos as place? What ontological and more
    particularly, methodological premises currently guide inquiry
    practices in the beginning of the 21st century? Are these being
    transformed in some ways?  What levels of abstraction and
    reconfiguration are involved in the collection of humans (and their
    data) as data?

  *

    How do processes of mediationconstitute an ethos of methodological
    emplacement? All social research entails a particular assemblage of
    media forms and practices that lay the foundation for methodology.
      In addition, all practices are situated in particular social,
    economic, institutional, and disciplinary frameworks. All
    methodologies, therefore, are situated and mediated. How do ethics
    get played out over multiple layers of mediation? For example,
    qualitative researchers commonly abstract lived experience in
    multiple ways, through inscription of observations, recording of
    interviews, and often qualitative data analysis software.
    Quantitative social science likewise depends on methods that extract
    particular data from the context; sample through variable selection,
    survey instruments and statistical software packages; and so on.
      Each assemblage of mediation produces different objects and
    subjects of research, as well as different definitions of validity,
    reliability, and so on. What kind of mediations and situations
    envelop social media platforms and big data analytics? What kinds of
    research subjects and objects do they suppose and/or propose? What
    ethical practices do these mediations facilitate, constrain, or 
require?


  *

    If social computing research entails a different configuration of
    epistemology, ontology and methodology than other modes of empirical
    research in the human sciences, what are the implications for the
    model of “informed consent” that is currently the litmus test 
of the
    ethics of human subject research? How are we to understand the
    ethical implications of the power relationship between a corporate
    entity that is legally construed to be a sovereign subject with the
    rights of a person (in the US) and the "subjects" of research who
    are disarticulated from their personhood through a cloud of data
    analytics?

  *

    Should we revisit the old epistemological debates between
    quantitative and qualitative social science? The discussion of
    corporate research ethics, particularly since Facebook’s “emotional
    contagion” experiments of 2014, exposed many rifts between on the
    one hand social media platforms and the teams that perform analytics
    on automatically-generated large data sets; and on the other hand,
    qualitative oriented social scientists in internet studies. One
    participant in the debates described the latter group as being
    comprised of ‘those whose research is primarily rhetorical,’ in
    contrast to the social computing researchers whose work is more
    ‘objective’ because of its reliance on data driven experimentation.
    To what extent is the popularity of data- and evidence-driven models
    returning to modernist criteria for quality such as validity,
    reliability and generalizability? What might be the ethical
    consequences of privileging certain kinds of validity? Of particular
    salience here would be the social computing emphasis on the
    extremely large number of cases afforded by social media platforms.
      Does the comparatively huge number of ‘cases’ in big data
    analytics necessarily entail a higher degree of validity, however
    defined? Further, does the employment of A/B experimental models
    also enhance validity and rigour?

Other thematically resonant topics include (by are no means limited to):

  *

    Discussion of epistemological sticking points that might help
    explain the particular, and some might say peculiar, transformation
    of human activity to data points that can be analyzed separate from
    the temporal, textural, and emplaced lived experience.

  *

    Emergent ideas of ethics and labor practices involved in the
    exchange of personal data for platform and interface services.

  *

    Discussion or problematization of regulatory driven models of
    ethical practice that create pre-formed boundaries and regulatory
    norms; privilege particular activities and methods according to
    specific definitions of such concepts as informed consent,
    definition of human subjects, and protection of privacy; and fail to
    address the complexities of contemporary socio-technical relations
    of social media platforms.

Primary Editors of the Special Issue:

Andrew Herman, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

Annette Markham, Aarhus University, Denmark


Timeline:


Submit 750 word abstract for consideration: May 15, 2016

Receive Invitation to contribute: June 15, 2016

Submit full paper for peer review: November 1, 2016

Receive results of peer review: January 15, 2016

Submit revised manuscript: March 1, 2017


Style/Form of Paper

We encourage a range of style for papers. You might choose to make a
position statement, defend a manifesto, or develop new models and tools
for thinking. You might choose a creative reporting of an empirical
study. We are as promiscuous in style as we are in theory, and seek to
make a critical intervention with this special issue. The paper length
is somewhat shorter than is typical to compel contributors to make
strong but precise arguments or critical analyses that might provoke
debate and further conversation among readers.


Abstracts (submit by May 15, 2016) should be no longer than 750 words,
not including references.

Please submit abstracts via email to (ethicasmethod /at/ gmail.com)
<mailto:(ethicasmethod /at/ gmail.com)>. Attach the submission as a PDF file.
Please include proposed title, author name(s), 750 word abstract, and
references.


Full papers (submit by November 1, 2016) should be no longer than 6,000
words, including references.

Manuscripts should follow the SM+S guidelines which are available at
https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/social-media-society/journal202332#submission-guidelines


Authors should cite their own work as they would any other author, both
in text and in the Reference section, being careful not to indicate that
the work they are citing is their own. Manuscripts that use (Author)
will be returned.


SM+S uses APA style citation. Guidelines at: http://www.apastyle.org/

Accepted manuscripts will not incur any open access fees.


To submit your manuscript you will need to make an account at
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/smasYou will then login to this
account, select Author Center, and then under Author Resources, you will
click where it says "Click here to submit a new manuscript." This will
begin the submission process.


The system will guide you through the submission process, but here are
some instructions for specific questions:


It is imperative that in Step One of the submission page you select "SI:
Ethics As Method" for submission type.


In Step Four of the submission process, you will answer "No" to the
question "Has this manuscript been submitted previously to this journal?"


If you have any questions, ideas, or want to discuss this in advance,
please feel free to contact either of the editors: amarkham [at] dac
[dot] au {dot} dk or aherman [at] wlu {dot} ca.


​

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