Exploring Novel Frontiers in Online Privacy Ethics

Abstract

Social networks have become a new environment in which a large part of our daily life has been transposed. It has become a new research environment and tool for two reasons: It is easy and cheap to use and offers the chance to provide a large amount of novelty. However, questions arise as people navigate privacy on social media differently than in real life, meaning, less intuitively and over a longer time. With this in mind, this study examines how people perceive privacy on social networks and how collecting data without consent violates users' privacy rights, even when the information is public. For this, we focus on the Romanian case study and explore new perspectives on online research to uphold human rights and maintain research objectivity. The results show that managing privacy online is not intuitive, and it requires time for the users to understand how their data can be accessed and used, and to learn the tools they can employ to limit other's access to personal information. We also have found that the majority of our study participants see social networks as a tool for socialization and the use of their information outside this purpose violates their privacy rights. The paper proposes a set of principles and markers to help researchers differentiate between personal and public information to comply with research ethics and not breach human rights.