One of the great challenges of undertaking any kind fo research or fieldwork in social media spaces is ensuring that people’s data is protected as appropriate. There is some discussion about how this should be done – and, indeed, whether it should be done at all. After all, the argument goes, if you’re only using what people are publicly sharing, then it doesn’t really matter for what purpose it is used, does it? I don’t agree with that – for two reasons, really. In the first instance, neither Twitter or Instagram or any other form of social media is a really an entirely public place: these are run by companies owned by shareholders; hence, it’s not correct to say that these tweets or posts have been expressed ‘in public’.
And, equally, I think there is something different between a speech or something similar in a public space, and a posting on twitter, for example. Firstly there is a different element of temporality: that is, a speech in the public sphere or a comment from a protestor at a rally is one thing; it’s ephemeral and disappears after that point. A tweet, on the other hand, is a more permanent, and, importantly, searchable, record. Even if it is deleted, it’s not always entirely erased, and that means that quoting any such tweet means exposing the poster to follow up discussions, arguments, attention and even abuse.
Annette Markham has written about some of the ways that these challenges might be addressed by researchers. She argues that it is ethically acceptable to engage in the practice of fabrication. IN doing so she draws on fabrication’s history as part of interpretive, postpositivist enterprises of social inquiry, where in the data is actually negotiated understandings derived from the researchers’ own participation and presence. She suggests the following ways of doing this:
- Composite accounts
- Fictional Narratives
She suggests that while engaging in this, it’s possible to still engage with research with rigour.