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Safety issues for researchers conducting and disseminating research on social media have been inadequately addressed in institutional policies and practice globally, despite posing significant challenges to research staff and student well-being. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and given the myriad of advantages that web-based platforms offer researchers over traditional recruitment, data collection, and research dissemination methods, developing a comprehensive understanding of and guidance on the safe and effective conduct of research in web-based spaces has never been more pertinent. In this paper, we share our experience of using social media to recruit participants for a study on abortion stigma in Australia, which brought into focus the personal, professional, and institutional risks associated with conducting web-based research that goes viral. The lead researcher (KV), a postgraduate student, experienced a barrage of harassment on and beyond social media. The supportive yet uncoordinated institutional response highlighted gaps in practice, guidance, and policy relating to social media research ethics, researcher safety and well-being, planning for and managing web-based and offline risk, and coordinated organizational responses to adverse events. We call for and provide suggestions to inform the development of training, guidelines, and policies that address practical and ethical aspects of using social media for research, mental and physical health and safety risks and management, and the development of coordinated and evidence-based institutional- and individual-level responses to cyberbullying and harassment. Furthermore, we argue the case for the urgent development of this comprehensive guidance around researcher safety on the web, which would help to ensure that universities have the capacity to maximize the potential of social media for research while better supporting the well-being of their staff and students.
Social media is rapidly becoming a mainstream tool for the conduct and dissemination of research, health interventions, and evaluations [
In this context of new risks and opportunities, research ethics processes, the literature, and guidelines are beginning to address the specific concerns associated with research participant safety and well-being in web-based and social media research. However, robust and constructive cross-institutional and interdisciplinary conversations and guidance addressing the management of and support for researcher safety and well-being continue to be largely missing. In this paper, we argue that there is an urgent need for robust guidance on the use of social media for research, paying particular attention to the need for institutional and ethical frameworks and researcher training that address web-based safety and mental well-being. By outlining our extraordinary and challenging experience of
Under consistent pressure to meet research performance expectations in the context of time constraints, in the COVID-19 pandemic environment of limited travel and face-to-face engagement opportunities, and given the benefits of engaging with technological innovations to improve research processes, researchers increasingly occupy web-based networks and social media platforms for the communication and conduct of research. In this context, social media–enabled recruitment has never been more relevant. The reach, speed, affordability, flexibility, and potential for multidirectional communication and
Along with these benefits, the limited (albeit growing) body of literature on using social media for research also describes challenges, including self-selection bias, engagement, and underrecruitment, along with a lack of control over the framing and sharing of content shared on the web [
There are additional potential challenges associated with the use of social media in research. The absence of facial and social cues and gestures on the web that would otherwise be present in face-to-face interactions and the real or perceived anonymity that web-based interactions can afford increase the potential for interpersonal conflicts and escalation of arguments [
Despite the myriad of challenges it poses, social media will be increasingly used by researchers who will become fluent in navigating and imagining its potential. Concurrently, these researchers will inevitably face evolving and fluent forms of harassment. As such, there is an onus on higher education and research industries and institutions to assume greater responsibility for the well-being of staff and students on the web, supporting and equipping them with the tools needed to safely navigate and effectively use these platforms and appropriately responding when harassment occurs.
As part of the primary author’s (KV) PhD research on abortion stigma in Australia, Facebook was used to recruit members of the Australian public to a web-based survey.
A number of professional, academic, and ethical challenges were faced by our research team during this process, which we share here in the hope that they will inform conversation and debate around the role of universities in better understanding, mitigating, and addressing researcher and student safety on the web.
Over 2 years, the authors developed a quantitative survey measuring abortion attitudes, knowledge, and perceived abortion stigma, which is the first of its kind to be developed and implemented in Australia. The survey tool was informed by extensive literature searching and qualitative and quantitative testing. It included, among others, a combination of items that endorsed and rejected stigmatizing abortion-related statements. The study received approval from the Flinders University ethics committee, including approval to omit all researcher names from the study documents.
Participants were recruited to the study using Facebook advertisements, which were targeted broadly at anyone living in Australia aged ≥16 years. Our ability to alter and retarget advertisements over time to ensure that the self-selected sample was as representative of the population as possible, the team’s familiarity with using paid Facebook advertising and the relative speed at which recruitment could occur made recruitment via Facebook an appealing and logical choice. It may be relevant to consider that the survey was released during the height of the first round of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in Australia in April 2020 when other methods of recruitment were likely to be more challenging than usual.
In just 2 weeks of Facebook advertising, 3500 participants completed the survey. At this time, the advertisements were retargeted to facilitate the recruitment of participants aged >40 years and male participants, underrepresented among the respondents. During the process of releasing these more targeted advertisements, the survey attracted the attention of a prominent antiabortion (prolife) lobby group who shared it with their membership via email and on their Facebook page. Within 48 hours, >5000 survey responses and close to 100 emails were received by the lead researcher (KV). At this time, the paid Facebook advertisements were halted, although the survey link remained live.
Comments undermining and debating the survey method and style, along with common antichoice sentiments around the “irresponsibility of women seeking abortion” and “abortion as murder” were noted as relevant social media posts. Emails to the research team and the university ethics committee contained
Coordinated attempts by this lobby group to undermine rights or evidence-based laws, policies, or programs, such as those pertaining to abortion, contraception, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) rights, including marriage equality, are common in Australia [
Although it has been difficult to formally track
A month later, a freedom of information request was submitted to the university to seek documents related to the study, including documents that indicated the reasons for the survey being closed and the survey responses themselves. As the lead researcher (KV) was a student, their name and most of the information requested were redacted. Details regarding other members of the research team and the content of several personal emails between the lead researcher and her supervisors were provided; some of them were later published on the web by the antiabortion lobby group.
Despite such a successful recruitment process, our unpreparedness for the speed with which the survey would be shared on the web led to a number of challenges for the research team. For example, we were initially unprepared to manage (practically and emotionally) the hundreds of hostile emails, which appeared to be a coordinated attempt to shut down the project and were received in a span of a few days. Although the researchers’ names were not in the public sphere, staying anonymous was a short-term solution, with the need to publish the work and findings, along with the freedom of information request, making disclosure inevitable.
A number of safety concerns arose, including concerns and uncertainty around the following: best practices for keeping safe on the web and preventing disclosure of personal details and location (of residence, in particular), the safety precautions that ought to be considered or implemented offline, and a lack of institutional capacity to provide such knowledge and support, the research team awareness of other strategies (with associated risks) that lobby or activist groups were likely to engage in, ways to balance the potential professional benefits of media interest with researcher and student well-being, and an understanding of risks and managing them to protect the university and individual reputations.
Phone and web-based meetings with the research team (because of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions), on-campus phone-based mental health support, and the university media team and ethics committee were all available to support and respond to the lead researcher’s (KV) questions throughout the process of
Although it was deemed unlikely that web-based harassment would translate into offline risks of violence, a history of hostile activism and violence against abortion providers and supporters by antiabortion individuals and groups, both locally and abroad [
There is a dearth of literature documenting research
Other researchers have reported harassing experiences in response to Facebook advertising, including in response to advertisements for LGBTQIA+ research participants [
Among the Australian public, negative web-based experiences are common. In 2019, 14% of adults in Australia were estimated to have been the target of hate speech [
Cyberbullying and harassment result in social, mental, physical, financial, and academic consequences for victims, and these impacts are more commonly experienced by minority or marginalized individuals and communities [
The literature describing the ethical challenges associated with social media use in research are rooted in traditional ethical frameworks, with a focus on participant safety and protection. Ethical dilemmas regarding the appropriateness of the use of social media users’ web-based data as
Ethics committees routinely request, as they must, detailed information about potential risks to participant safety and strategies to manage these risks. However, what is often neglected in ethics processes, the published literature on social media–based research, and institutional policies is researcher safety and well-being on the web. We acknowledge that this gap exists within a broader gap regarding researcher safety issues, described most frequently as relating to fieldwork and sensitive research, which are not new but remain inadequately addressed [
Health and social scientists and research students can face considerable risks and consequences associated with conducting research on politically contested or otherwise sensitive topics, which are characteristic of many areas of health research [
There appears to be a dearth of comprehensive and integrated frameworks, training, and guidance for preparing research staff and students to implement and manage their work and safety on the web, both at the institutional and research levels [
Research from North American universities has found that over half of their faculty members are unsure whether there are resources available to support them if they experience web-based bullying; however, they believe universities should be responsible for preventing and stopping web-based bullying [
Research institutions have a duty of care toward staff and students and, as such, an obligation to develop and implement strategies to protect researchers in the diversity of their modern workspaces. Although universities in Australia are legally mandated to hold policies addressing cyberbullying of staff, similar policies are not legally required for students [
Failing to remain current with and address web-based safety concerns is not unique to universities. The
In 2019, Russomanno et al [
On the basis of our experiences, relevant guidance addressing researcher safety on the web could also speak to the following:
The need for the routine provision of evidence-based training in ethical issues in web-based research for both researchers and ethics committees; this could support increased confidence of institutional review boards and individual researchers in using social media research strategies effectively, along with encouraging the teaching of techniques to minimize the risk of exposure to potentially harmful content and responses
Information on and strategies addressing the blurring of private and professional boundaries on the web and changing notions of privacy, including the implications for researcher safety and security, and guidance on the responsibilities of institutions in cases where harassment occurs and may move through public and private spaces
Emphasis on the legal, practical, and ethical implications of working across various social media platforms
The need to understand, support, and strengthen the digital fluency and mental health risks and capacity of researchers to prevent, manage, and respond to potential harassment and bullying, including clear protocols for individual and institutional support and response when harassment does occur
Strategies for engaging with media, both in the more traditional sense of media training and in regard to responding and communicating on the web, ensuring such strategies are not centered around avoidance of social media or on a victim-blaming mentality
Understanding language use, inclusion and exclusion terms, and other platform-specific features that can help researchers to minimize risks associated with social media–based recruitment
Universities may also benefit from institution-wide efforts toward understanding and planning for the ways in which various departments and roles across the organization need to contribute to and work together toward coordinated and effective responses to adverse events.
There appears to be a consensus in the literature that guidance pertaining to web-based research ethics should be based on traditional ethical and well-being frameworks, partially to aid ethics bodies in their transition to assessing risks in these
Instead of fearing the unknowns and risks of web-based research, the development of comprehensive guidance around web-based safety will help to ensure that universities and research groups have the capacity to maximize the potential of social media for research while better supporting the well-being of research staff and students. As such, we propose that the higher education sector, research institutions, and ethics bodies need to engage more fully with the emerging risks social media presents. When the potential benefits for the quality of research outcomes and for staff and student well-being are weighed against the risks of not better engaging with these issues, the urgency and importance of this work become clear.
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual
BB is the coconvenor of the South Australian Abortion Action Coalition. KV holds a position as a Research Assistant with Children by Choice.