An ethical dilemma
Alarmingly, though, he warns that the two sides are dividing along ethical lines. “If market research companies abide by the old ethics, in particular anonymity and informed consent, they will not be able to compete for business in most areas where market research is growing,” Poynter writes.
These growth areas are things like brand communities and social media monitoring which challenge traditional assumptions of what research should be. This is clearly causing a headache for industry associations like Esomar and the Market Research Society (MRS), who have both recently published documents – one a set of guidelines, the other a discussion paper – that have come in for some criticism from advocates of the ‘new’. In the US, the Council of American Survey Research Organisations (Casro) this week published its own draft guidelines which are, in many respects, similar to Esomar’s, and can no doubt expect an equivalent response.
“When you’re pushing at boundaries it is easy to feel frustrated by rules that seem to hold you back. But hasty decisions are never the wisest”
The task facing these organisations is to balance traditional values with the new realities of what market researchers can feasibly do [at this point I should disclose that the MRS pays my salary and publishes this website, though we maintain editorial independence]. How does the requirement that respondents give informed consent square with a world in which they share their opinions publicly and these can be harvested and analysed without them knowing? Why do research participants have to be anonymous when many consumers use social media channels to talk directly to companies, join communities and help co-create new products?
As far as I can see, no one is saying they have to – but without anonymity or informed consent, or adherence to any of the other key principles of market research, standards-setting bodies are saying that such activities should not be portrayed as ‘market research’.
Poynter argues that this is “nonsense”, and that we could soon end up in a situation where the majority of work done by researchers is classified as “not market research”. But his suggestion – for commercial researchers to adopt a new set of ethics and leave the old ones to the social researchers and academics – seems rash.
Researchers shouldn’t be so quick to want to adandon a strong and widely-recognised self-regulatory regime. British journalism is currently in a quagmire because of weak self regulation, which allowed a rotten few to abuse the basic journalistic responsibility of finding and publishing information, to justify the unlawful hacking of people’s private voicemails. The result of the scandal is likely to be tougher regulation – or legislation – to control journalism.
There are research parallels here, though significantly less scandalous. Think back to the PatientsLikeMe incident, where a closed community of disease sufferers was unwittingly mined for comments. Outrage followed – but it was contained because the research industry could point to a long-held principle that people should give their informed consent to take part in research and should be told what companies are doing with their information.
One might argue that the rules should be different for public spaces like Twitter and blogs and forums and large parts of Facebook – yet the informed consent requirement can still be maintained so why jettison it? Casro says researchers must ensure they have a legal right to harvest data – as set out in a site’s terms of use – and that there is “a reasonable basis to conclude that most users would be aware that the information they provide could be viewed by anyone with relative ease”.
“Market research might be changing, but so are consumer expectations of privacy and with it the laws that govern them”
Anonymising online commenters can also be achieved through masking techniques, according to Esomar. At its most basic, this would involve making alterations to republished comments so they cannot be found through search engines. So again, why is it necessary to abandon a long-held principle?
In his blog, Poynter suggests a set of NewMR ethics based around adherence to the law, not doing things likely to outrage the public, creating high standards and emphasising the need to be open and honest. It’s not clear how this really differs from what the ‘OldMR’ organisations set out to do.
It’s a perilous time for market research, when even a website has no right to monitor how its own visitors behave thanks to new rules from the European Union. When you’re pushing at boundaries it is easy to feel frustrated by rules that seem to hold you back. But hasty decisions are never the wisest.
Market research might be changing, but so are consumer expectations of privacy and with it the laws that govern them. Straying outside the bounds of what is accepted to be – and more importantly what legislators understand to be – market research might prove just as commercially risky in the long run as sticking with notions of ‘anonymity’ and ‘informed consent’.
‘Old ethics’ they may be, but they are exactly what consumers and legislators are arguing for in their dealings with online behavioural advertisers. Researchers should be proud of the fact that in this respect they are clearly ahead of the rest.
Brian Tarran is editor of Research Magazine and Research-Live.com
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23 Comments
Annie Pettit
14 years ago
There is nothing old or new about social media research techniques (ignore the data source for a second). They employ naturalistic observational techniques and participant observational techniques which have been around for decades. Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists use these highly ethical techniques all the time. They do not necessarily require permission from the people being researched BECAUSE they are done in highly ethical manners. University boards around the world, known for having extremely high standards for research ethics, accept and approve these methods. These are standard, true, and valid research methods. I truly do not understand why the market research industry would consider treating them any differently. If we move beyond that, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that research organizations will quickly become irrelevant if they cannot appreciate obversational techniques. The world is full of people who have no incentive to appreciate the ethics that we as market researchers bring to the table. Those people don't need to join MR organizations or call themselves market researchers to conduct observational research. I, however, WANT to be a member of research organizations. There are simple solutions to the problems that have been identified. Let's just work together and solve them. Then, we move forward better than ever. I hope to look back at these discussions as a great time when our industry rallied together for a greater cause and came out the better for it. http://lovestats.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/eulogy-for-a-beloved-market-research-organization/
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Ray Poynter
14 years ago
I think my main concern is that the MR great and the good are trying to re-shape the world in the image of the MR industry in the 1950s. We should be letting the people who supply the data define the rules (the people we used to call respondents). I think the public and the legislators are both beginning to realise that industries that self-regulate restrict competition and by-pass democratic and accountable processes - something the recent 'hackgate' scandal in the UK has highlighted.
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Brian Tarran
14 years ago
I think that's a noble idea, Ray, but perhaps impractical. How do we let people define the rules? One could argue they already do, as they elect the people who set the broader legislative frameworks around which market research – indeed all businesses – can operate. I guess you could define the rules on a per-project basis, so that you make clear at the outset of a project that "this is how you want to use the data/this is what we need from you - do you agree/refuse to take part?" But that will leave consumers (and more importantly legislators) with a very diverse view of what constitutes a research project, making it hard to lobby as one. Or you could appoint a panel of consumers to rule on what they find acceptable/don't find acceptable – but if you think recruiting for surveys are hard, I'd imagine that'd be tougher. I really don't see that the alternative to self-regulation would be some kind of ever-evolving compact between researchers and respondent/participants/consumers. The more likely alternative is disinterested, ill-informed and heavy-handed government oversight.
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John Griffiths
14 years ago
Please tell me I've got this wrong. But if I copy and paste your post Brian and put it in a client presentation without your knowledge I shall be in breach of the proposed MRS code. You see Brian you might have thought as a journalist that you are publishing in an open area. But according to what is being proposed - the internet is now classified as all private, and I am breaching copyright by taking what you have posted without your permission. And by the way since I used your material you have become a respondent. Which you became without giving your permission to be recruited as one. In order for the code to be enforced so I ask your permission next time. The basic problem is trying to fit every kind of research into the bod who asks the questions and the bod who gives the answer paradigm. Which by the way has never been a good or adequate definition of qualitative research. I really hope I've got the wrong end of the stick on this one. I'm in process of setting up a Cloud of Knowing session (Cloud 7) on Aug 31st for us to debate this and the CASRO/ESOMAR alternative.
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Ray Poynter
14 years ago
Hi Brian, I am not sure that giving power to the people is so hard. For brevity I will set this in the context of the UK and its legislation: 1) All surveys could let respondent's determine if the data is to be treated as anonymous or not 2) People should be able to say that MR companies (or company X) should not be able to contact them - no do not call exemptions 3) If respondents want the client's products as incentives, they should be able to have them (which means giving up Data Protection exemptions) 4) People joining online communities or taking part in deliberative research could be informed that the research might change their behaviour - and agree or refuse 5) In social media analysis we still need to work through the details, and the details will change as the social web evolves, but we need a level playing field. A level playing field means legislation, not codes of conduct that only relate to a minority. Rules/laws might help if they defined what is public and what is private, whether people 'scraping' data had a duty of care to the originators of the comments, the rights of people to remove their comments, and the point at which data collection moves from acceptable to stalking. The main role I see for self-regulation is not for ethics, I trust the people and legislators more than the industry for that, but for quality marks for clients. Professional accreditation, the use of peer reviewed techniques, and making justifiable claims about the trustworthiness of the data are of little interest to respondents, but of great interest to clients, and could confer an economic benefit to those suffering the economic costs of complying.
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Brian Tarran
14 years ago
John, As far as I know, the MRS document is not proposing a code but setting out the legislative framework within which a code must sit. But that's by the by. What the MRS document rightly points out is that if you took my post and included it in a client presentation without my permission you would be in breach of copyright that I – or more correctly Research Magazine – holds over my writing. It is up to the individual copyright holder whether to pursue you for such infringement, but that doesn't change the fact that what you have done might be actionable. I am publishing in a public area, but that doesn't mean copyright doesn't apply. Republishing journalism is a bad example though, because journalistic organisations usually have an army of lawyers to defend their copyright. Facebook, Twitter comments, etc. are likely to be a whole different kettle of fish. An uploaded photo is clearly the property of whoever took it, but status updates and tweets? You might recall that the Library of Congress has committed to archiving all public tweets without the permission of all individual authors – but that's for history's sake not market research.
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Brian Tarran
14 years ago
Ray, The points you make are eminently sensible – and indeed, as I understand it, they are the kinds of questions you might ask a respondent now, though depending on the answers you might find yourself residing in this "not market research" space. I fully accept that research is changing and the types of projects researchers might be called on to do are exciting and fascinating in the way they blend both research skills and marketing consultancy, advice and advocacy. Yet I still think there is a strong argument for maintaining a base level understanding of what "market research" is and the ethics that underpin it. It might not fit with what researchers are actually called on to do some of the time, but it will help to preserve the core when legislation might threaten other aspects of the job. Just look at the cookie rules adopted by the European Union. For web analytics companies this is a potential nightmare, having to ask permission of every user whether to place a cookie on their machine even when all they really want to do is anonymously measure and understand online visitor behaviour. But cookies have become so associated with advertising, and tracking with targeting, and many web analytics companies have not made a virtue of gaining the subject's consent (beyond a website's Ts&Cs) that now they are forced to do it it's a shock to the business model. By contrast, the big web measurement firms I've spoke to about this are relatively confident that because their core offering is an opt-in measurement panel, they can continue providing websites with visitor data regardless. If the vision of the web espoused by Wired's Chris Anderson comes to pass then we can expect to see the public internet disappearing to be replaced instead by a series of private, walled gardens with the power to shut companies out on a whim (see Apple). In such an environment, gaining the 'informed consent' of research participants (and the gatekeepers of the walled gardens) is going to be a business necessity.
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John Griffiths
14 years ago
I wonder if it would be useful to make a distinction between research where people are represented and those where they are not and what is happening is a sampling of the culture. The reason we have a code at all is because researchers have entered into a financial contract with the marketer and the code is a response to the perceived conflict of interest - what rights does the individual have if the researcher is being paid to research them? The respondent needs to be protected from the perils of misrepresentation, or repurposing what is collected to enable the marketer to sell to that individual - when their recourse is extremely limited. In this case I would suggest that the researcher as well as assembling a representative sample has a duty to fairly represent those from whom they are collecting data. However I would treat the sampling of the culture very differently because there isn't a direct relationship with a respondent. Observation as Annie Pettit commented above - would fall into this category also. It shouldn't be possible to identify an individual posting when this culture sampling is taking place - so they can't be sold to on the basis of the information they have provided. The monitoring of online content is culture sampling. If researchers aren't allowed to do it or it becomes prohibitively complicated for us to do so then either we have to stop being market researchers or retreat to being those who only function in the area of direct representation of customers. Leaving social media monitoring companies to clean up with a queue of clients switching their budgets away from 'research' to this kind of work. There is a bigger danger behind that - which is that as social media companies become more adept at culture sampling the same tools can be adjusted for CRM activity - the tracking of customers for commercial purposes. If the CRM manager can generate insights about the customer without needing to secure specific permissions for research. Then why should any client pay for research except in very particular narrow circumstances? In summary for research to remain competitive we need a way for market research to maintain its share of business intelligence. If we stay with the existing paradigm of direct representation of customers then we won't. So make a division and allow researchers to sample culture without having to collect all the permissions.
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John Griffiths
14 years ago
Brian I have always understood that if I attribute the content which I have used then I am not in breach of copyright because I have named the source. Which makes quoting people viable however aggressive the legal people working for the organisation. This doesn't work for market research because if I were to attribute a respondent to a client then they would be identifiable. Which is why we have to treat market research as a special case. The internet as a medium can be confessional - yes there is a lot of anonymity but people are often perfectly happy to be attributed. If there are social media spaces where this is part of the terms and conditions - people accept that their named comments can be taken and used for commercial purposes - even if this is used by companies to market directly to them (behavioural targeting - being a good example) then this would fall outside of the guidelines of market research. But a client might well be very willing to pay for it.
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Brian Tarran
14 years ago
John, there is a defense of 'fair use' under copyright law which should protect you if you are only lifting a small portion of an article – but technically, whether you name the source or not, if you don't seek permission you could be sued for breach of copyright. I'd argue that individual social network users probably wouldn't pursue you for breach of copyright, but its technically possible that the social networks themselves – if they assign themselves the copyright of all content hosted on their platform – may well decide to take action against scraping on an industrial scale. I disagree with your assumption, though that "people accept that their named comments can be taken and used for commercial purposes". It might be in the T&Cs, so legally permissable, but I reckon you'd be on ethically shaky ground. Using my mum as an example, she's on Facebook to talk to her friends, to share pictures and to keep up with family. I don't think it would even occur to her – even if she could work out what the legalese of the T&Cs were saying – that she had in some way signed up to have her comments taken and used for commercial purposes. The question remains: just because you can, does it mean you should? The Esomar/Casro documents, to my mind, set out a decent ethical framework in which to consider your actions as a researcher.
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Paul Vittles
14 years ago
Last year I heard a CEO of a leading media organisation at a social media event say "there is no such thing as private information any more". I started several discussions around this comment in a number of LinkedIn groups and many high profile researchers and social media analysts said they totally agreed, with a minority strongly disagreeing. Of course the statement is a good example of a value and a belief system. Organisations and individuals signing up to this belief system can find themselves crossing lines and 'phone hacking becomes a short step! The walled garden of MR needs to change with the times and get real about fundamental shifts, eg in representation and representativeness, but it would cease to be the MR profession if it wasn't passionate about ethics and privacy. Debates on codes and frameworks should be underpinned by principles and values, and then be developed in line with reality in mind. So what are the key principles and values at the centre of this debate? Do we believe that informed consent is crucial and then test it against the new reality or are we saying informed consent is no longer our core principle? And do you agree or disagree with the statement "there is no such thing as private information any more"?
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Quentin Ashby
14 years ago
No matter what side of the fence you fall on here, we have to accept that web scraping is currently an ethically grey area and we need to tread carefully. However, if we can overcome the copyright issues with the website owners, can someone respond to Annie Pettit's point above and explain how using quotes from a public web space without the posters consent is different from traditional observational research?
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Brian Tarran
14 years ago
I think, Quentin, the issue is less whether you have the right to use the quotes – the T&Cs will tell you whether you do or not – but whether you should take steps to protect the identity of the author unless you have their permission. Let's say you go out for a night on the town. I could follow your every move, make a note of who you talk to, what you say and what you eat and drink. You might not know I'm there watching, but that doesn't matter because its a public space and you have a reasonable expectation that other people can see and hear whatever you say or do. I could leave it there and write up my observations, explaining what a male of X-years-old living in Y city does on a night out and the kinds of things he talks about. Or I could follow you home, find out your address, look it up in the electoral register – all publicly available – and give my client a highly personal account of what you specifically did on your night out. Clearly one of those options requires some informed consent on the part of the subject being observed. I'm not an expert, but I'd guess that the "highly ethical manners" Annie refers to in relation to what psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists do probably involves an element of protecting the identity of the subject. But if not, they could make an argument that the work they do is about advancing the understanding of human behaviour and the world we live in. Commercial research contributes to that, but its main purpose is to help companies sell more stuff.
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Ray Poynter
14 years ago
Hi Brian, as I understand it the Ts and Cs are also a grey area. If Research were to say to its readers you can't use the information you read in our magazine for commercial purposes it would not hold water - Research could protect its copyright, but not the use of 'fair' and short quotes - for example saying that in an interview in Research Aug 2011 Klaus Wubbenhorts said "Synovate is not the right target for GfK". Similarly when Facebook or Twitter publish to the total web the strength of their Ts and Cs can only be determined by trying them in court. Facebook, Twitter, Google can restrict the automated reading of their material, but that is partly because there is a cost to a site in being read via automated techniques (it consumes bandwidth). In the current edition of Research Robert Bain quotes David Cameron and Steve Hilton, did he expressly gain consent. Or, did he infer that consent had been given because of the way that Cameron and Hilton had made their comments? My, non-legally informed, view is that in terms of material that is not behind a gate (i.e. where you don't have to register, join, sign-in etc) the key issues are 1) not causing harm, 2) copyright, 3) doing what you think people have consented to. In terms of this point 3, I feel that this means if, for example, somebody writes a blog and uses feedburner to distribute it, then quoting them is fine provided it is not likely to cause harm or breach copyright.
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Brian Tarran
14 years ago
Ray, my response would be that it is potentially dangerous to assume that people posting online and distributing their content to other web users have somehow consented to having that information packaged up and sold as part of a research project. Most people in writing a blog, Tweeting or publishing are doing so for the benefit of themselves and other people like them. It is people talking to people, unless they are addressing a company direct (which is different to just commenting on a company). Nine times out of ten the people you quote (with names attached) either won't know or won't care – most likely the former. But that's a receipe for a Wall Street Journal expose along the lines of the recent ad tracking/targeting one. And as we learnt from that issue, it's not about the actual harm caused – it's about the perceived threat of harm. It seems to me that the industry can either take its chances that the court of public opinion won't someday decided that "its scandalous that companies are harvesting our blog posts, status updates and tweets and selling them on to brands" – or it can find a way to avoid that happening while still tapping the richness of data that social media offers. I was once on the receiving end of a very strongly worded email because I quoted someone, name and all, based on a comment they'd made in a 'public' space. You'd of thought they'd have been chuffed that someone had found their words interesting enough to repeat elsewhere, but apparently not. Being a journalist, I shrugged it off. "If they said it, we can publish it" – that's our professional motto. But that's probably one of the reasons why journalists often find themselves in the nether reaches of the trust indices. I'm not sure that's a position researchers would want to find themselves in.
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Rosie Campbell
14 years ago
Hey, great debate! (Did you realise this worm can was such a tardis, Brian...!) Couple of thoughts 1) Isn't it interesting how paradoxical the online world is - at once full to the brim with people (us!) wanting maximum noticeability, visibility, connection (what else is blogging or tweeting) yet at the same time equally full of anxiety about privacy, security, anonymity...the two camps far from mutually exclusive 2) Every time your purchasing client attends a group his/her 'customers' become immediately identifiable, and its often (literally) a one-way contract (yeah, yeah I know we say 'you can come and meet them behind the mirror later...but how many ever do...) 3) The big difference between the overt, agreed, contracted relationship in market research and the 'grey mass' that is observation/scraping/ethnography/'listening' (etc) is reward (often money) explicit consent and cognisence of purpose - the subject sphere for all the 'grey mass' arena is demonstrably disadvantaged - which is why, I broadly agree with Brian that we need to tread with caution, respect and care in these fields, in the online environment 4)...the 'killer' thought, for me, is that soooo often the outcomes or 'findings' of online 'listening' activity are so unbelievably banal and obvious that frankly most clients with any kind of muscle to their 'insight function would have been better off spending the budget on better sales data...
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Leonard Murphy
14 years ago
Thanks for joining in the debate Brian; you (and everyone else who has contributed!) certainly bring up some good points that all need to be considered in this important conversation. Although for the record I am in the "no holds barred' camp primarily due to competitive concerns with emerging companies that are increasingly winning market share from traditional market research suppliers, I am painfully aware that we can't sacrifice the soul of our industry for financial gain. The “borderless” aspect of the internet, especially social media portals, makes this doubly complex when differing cultural and legal issues are factored in. I still go back to my core position that I do not believe any legislative body will be able to seriously curtail this business process and it is unlikely that two of the largest companies in the world, that are also now fundamentally integral to the very fabric of online commerce, (Google and Facebook) will allow such efforts to go unchallenged. In this instance anyone who is involved in leveraging data for marketing intelligence has two stalking horses to use. I don’t think there are any easy answers here, but I am very glad that we’re openly asking the questions and thinking about the implications! Brian it will be much fun to have you on Radio NewMR next Tuesday with Ray, Andrew, and I to discuss this a bit more. I also hope everyone will join the virtual debate on 8/22 as a TBD Representative of the MRS, Adam Phillips from ESOMAR, Peter Milla from CASRO, Ray Poynter, Tom H.C. Anderson, & Michalis Michael all discuss the implications of these various issues on market research.
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Alec Maki
14 years ago
What's the debate? This is like comparing apples to cows. Sure, apples and cows have some things in common: both are living things and both have (roughly) round shapes. But, despite these commonalities, what's good for apples (and apple trees) is not the same as what's good for cows. If farmers were to apply the same rules and procedures to apple orchards as they do to cattle ranches, there'd be a lot fewer apples to go around. And that's too bad, because I like apples. My company conducts traditional research -- both online and offline. We follow ethical practices, and make every effort safeguard to protect the privacy of participants. We value this privacy, as it is essential to preserving the trust between parties and, hence, sharing of information. With these traditional approaches, we solicit participation. Consumers opt-in (usually for an incentive). There is a mutual agreement between researcher and participant. Part of this agreement is an understanding of privacy. This all makes sense in the traditional scheme of things. Social media information, however, is completely different than these traditional approaches. Sure, the information is still coming from people and we can learn a lot from it. But, like apples and cows, just because there are similarities between the two, that does not mean they should be treated the same way. What works for one does not necessarily work for the other. This debate would make sense if we were talking about the transition from offline survey research to online survey research. But we're not. Instead, this is more akin to the transition of offline observational research to online observational research. In the offline world, people do things in public places. They behave. They consume. They talk about it. They socialize. For hundreds (thousands?) of years, savvy business people have observed these behaviors and used this information to better craft offerings. For observational research, there are well-defined conventions (as outlined by Annie Petit above and in her LoveStats blog). It seems those may be closer to an apple-to-apple comparison with respect to social media research. In social media, people are simply putting content out there. It is publicly available. As in real life, they do things in public places. They behave. They consume. They talk about it. They socialize. It’s perfectly reasonable for savvy business people to observe these online behaviors (just like they do offline behaviors) and use this information to better craft offerings. Why should businesses be curtailed from learning from publicly available information because of policies based on traditional research methods? Simply put, businesses won’t be curtailed. They will use this information – regardless of how we, as an industry, shackle ourselves. Businesses will simply go around official “research” companies that abide by well-intended but misplaced ethical guidelines and work with non-research companies to observe people’s social media behavior, consumption, discussions and socialization. We, as an industry will watch this exodus as we’re curtailed by well-meaning regulations and guidelines. Social media information is too valuable for businesses. Speaking from experience, the insight that emerges can be outstanding. Further, it is publicly available. What’s more, it is the mission of companies like Twitter to share – with the public – information posted via their information channels. Businesses ignore public information at their peril. For example, businesses do not ignore the stock market when it goes up or down. That is public information. Businesses do not ignore competitive advertising campaigns. That is public information. Local restaurants do not (er, should not) ignore consumer feedback on sites like Yelp. That is public information. If people are talking about products and brands in the public domain, businesses have every right to listen and use those conversations. If they don’t, they put themselves at a disadvantage. There’s nothing ethical or unethical about observing publicly available information. It is out there, like the sky is blue, just a fact. Observing facts is not wrong. Using observations of facts to make better business decisions is not wrong. If anything, I would say it is more unethical to ignore known, observed facts if those can help you better serve customers. What’s more unethical: 1) listening to customer complaints on Yelp or YouTube and, as a result, fixing the source of those problems so the product/service is better or 2) not listening and continuing to offer a poor product/service? One action results in an improved offering and, one would presume, happier customers (yielding in some small fashion an overall uptick in social good). The other action results in a poor offering and unhappy customers. Unless there is clear rationale and justification, standards and policies should not circumvent common sense. They should not ignore how businesses have worked for hundreds of years when it comes to observing customer behavior. They should not ignore how businesses work now. They should not ignore the disciplines currently engaged in observational research. They should not ignore the disciplines currently engaged in online observational research (disciplines which are not bound by marketing research policies). They should not ignore the fact that, if they are followed, they will do unneeded financial harm to the industry that they are “ethically” seeking to guide. They should not create guidelines that fly in the face of history. They should not be designed for cows when we’re talking about apples. Because, like I said earlier, I like apples.
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Brian Tarran
14 years ago
Plenty of food for thought there, Alec. But I don't see anyone saying you can't listen to what is being said in social media and act on it, just as there's no-one stopping a retail manager from observing in-store behaviour and responding to it. The issue is that online and in social media the information being shared and observed often comes with personally identifiable information attached. When you observe someone in a store, you have no way of knowing their name, the town they live in or how many kids they have unless you ask them. Online, all this information might be contained in their Facebook/Twitter/blog/forum profile. Now, you might argue, they've shared that personal information publicly so it's fair game to collect and report to your client. The debate is whether you should or not: does the industry maintain its commitment to protecting the identity of the research subject ('respondent' in old parlance)? Should it take steps to ensure that the information collected comes from people who have a reasonable expectation that what they post might be seen by anyone? As much as we might wish it so, most people who post in social media do not expect their comments, names and online identities to be packaged up and published in a client's research report – and doing so might invite a public backlash and tougher legislation, similar to the EU's new cookie rules and the myriad online privacy bills being proposed in the US Congress. Indeed, much of the division on this issue is down to differences in the regulatory environment in Europe and the US. Data rules are much tougher in Europe – the Spanish government has just ordered Google to delete records of individuals, stating that people have a right to be forgotten. The situation is quite different in the US at the moment, but I wouldn't count on that always being the case. Public spaces – online and offline – are not fair game for people to do whatever they want with whatever is published there. There are rules, both legal and ethical, that individuals and companies must follow. This debate is about what those ethical rules should be for market researchers.
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Quentin Ashby
14 years ago
Responding to your post of 12-Aug-2011 Brian (been on holiday and very nice it was too), I've either misunderstood the MRSB standpoint on social media research (having read the consultation document) or that is exactly what it is saying. Namely that it is irrelevant whether you protect the privacy of a social network poster, using their comments for research purposes is unethical and against the principles of the code. On page 8 of the document it invites researchers to ask the following question 'Do the respondents know that they are participating in a research project and do they know they have the right to withdraw?' Other questions follow with also imply observing social media without consent is unethical. The strong inference from the whole document is that if someone doesn't know they are taking part in research, they should not be included, irrespective of whether you reveal their identity or not. For me, like many others, I suspect this is the biggest problem with the MRS standpoint as expressed in the consultation document; not the request to protect privacy, but the implication that all observation of social media and subsequent research analysis is unethical and against the code, unless you have sought consent from each and every poster.
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Brian Tarran
14 years ago
Hi Quentin, Glad you had a nice break. I won't quibble with your interpretation of the MRSB discussion paper – I was just responding to the question you asked broadly about the differences between taking and reading and analysing comments from social media and traditional observational research. But on the issue of whether taking quotes without permission is ethical or not, you should check out Reg Baker's latest blog post over at http://bit.ly/o4ujnB. He's got a slide from some SSI research showing that in many big countries (excepting India and China) only fairly small minorities of people agree with the idea that companies "should be allowed to collect information from social networking sites when it is posted online in a public forum".
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Quentin Ashby
14 years ago
Hi Brian, Yes I've seen the SSI results and you're right, this does raise ethical issues (although I haven't seen the exact questions that were asked by SSI just the slide results - as we all know, the way the question is asked, and the other questions that were asked around it really matter). I just want to make it clear (because much of the discussion has been about privacy rather than use per se) that to me and others the MRSB current standpoint implies members should not use any social media content in their research (unless they seek consent), and if this remains their standpoint then members will need to decide whether they really want to be restricted in that way. It will be interesting to see where things go from here.
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Cleo S Hughes
14 years ago
Can I just applaud your magazine for this article and the discussion it has provoked. I am hoping it draws the involvement of all communities affiliated to our industry and its future and they actively participate in any legislation affecting the new world and our industry in the future. thanks for this article and the initiative from your end. Welldone!
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