Ethics and online social network research – developing best practices

Social network sites (SNSs) and other online social networks such as Facebook and Twitter represent a huge source of data for research in many fields, including sociology, medicine, anthropology, politics and computer science. Such sites may contain sensitive information and care needs to be taken when designing experiments or collecting SNS data. We outline some of the potential ethical concerns, describe our efforts to develop best practices, and solicit help with outstanding challenges.