The Ethics of Social Media Analytics in Migration Studies

TL;DR

This paper reviews the ethical challenges and guidelines for using social media data in migration studies, providing researchers with practical tools to navigate legal and moral responsibilities.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive overview of ethical considerations and good practices for social media research in migration, integrating academic and legal perspectives.

Findings

Identifies key ethical issues in social media migration research.

Summarizes existing guidelines and frameworks.

Provides practical recommendations for ethical data use.

Abstract

The prevalence of social media platforms and their use across the globe makes them attractive options for studying large groups of people, particularly when some of these platforms provide access to large amounts of structured data. However, with the collection, storage, and use of this data comes ethical and legal responsibilities, which are particularly important when looking at social groups such as migrants, who are often stigmatised and criminalised. Various guidelines, frameworks and laws have been developed to ensure social media data is used in the most ethical way. However, they have quickly evolved within the past few years and are scattered across various fields and domains. To help researchers navigate these issues, this chapter provides an overview of the ethical considerations of studying migration via social media platforms. Building on relevant academic literature, as well as national and supranational frameworks and legislations, we review how the main ethical issues related to social media research have been discussed in the past twenty years and outline good practice examples to mitigate them. This overview is designed to provide researchers with theoretical and practical tools to consider and mitigate the ethical challenges related to social media research in migration-related contexts.