DATA 311 - Data Ethics Assignment 2: Social Media Social Science

In this assignment, we’ll dig into a couple of scandals from everybody’s favorite data ethics punching bag: Facebook¹. Your task will be to inform yourself about the details of one of two scandals by reading the available “source material” (rather than just the media coverage). You’ll write a 1-page response on your findings and thoughts on the issues, and we’ll have a discussion in class of both scandals.

Instructions

If your W# is odd, you’ll read about the 2014 emotional contagion study. If your W# is even, you’ll read about the recently leaked Instagram research on mental health in teen girls. You will read at least one popular press article as well as the documents actually produced by the researchers.

Write a 1-page (single-spaced) response discussing your findings, and some of your own thoughts on the issue. Use the questions below as a guide, but feel free to go wherever your thoughts take you.

The “Data”

2014 - Emotional Contagion Study (odd W#)

News article: Facebook Tinkers With Users’ Emotions in News Feed Experiment, Stirring Outcry

Academic Paper: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks

2021 - Instagram Teen Mental Health Research (even W#)

News article from the Wall Street Journal: Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic For Teen Girls, Its Research Shows

Internal research presentation, with after-the-fact annotations by Facebook: Teen Mental Health Deep Dive

Note: there’s quite a lot in the presentation. You don’t need to read every word, but you should get into it enough to understand the nature of the research and the high-level findings.

Questions:

1. As you read, try to get a clear picture of the facts of the situation. What did the researchers actually do?
   • What was their research question?
   • What sort of experiments did they do?
   • What sort of analysis did they perform?
2. Are there any aspects of the research where you see a potential for ethical problems? What concerns could apply? These may or may not be concerns that you share - try to think broadly about things that lots of people might reasonably be concerned about.
3. Think about how to evaluate the legitimacy of these concerns. What types of criteria apply? Do you think that ethical lines were crossed? If there is a general problem here, what could society do to solve it?

Rubric

This assignment is out of 10 points, and will be graded relatively coarsely on effort, thoughtfulness, and clarity. If you produced thoughtful and clearly-written answers to some of the above questions, you will receive full credit.