Information School News

PhD student Wasim Ahmed, Professor Peter Bath, and Dr Gianluca Demartini have recently had a peer-reviewed book chapter published which looked at the ethical, legal, and methodological challenges of researching Twitter. The chapter is now open access, and the abstract and the link to download the chapter are provided below. Abstract This chapter provides an overview of the specific legal, ethical, and privacy issues that can arise when conducting research using Twitter data. Existing literature is reviewed to inform those who may be undertaking social media research. We also present a number of industry and academic case studies in order to highlight the challenges that may arise in research projects using social media data. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the process that was followed to gain ethics approval for a Ph.D. project using Twitter as a primary source of data. By outlining a number of Twitter-specific research case studies, the chapter will be a valuable res...

Doctoral student Wasim Ahmed and Professor Peter Bath , pictured below, from the Health Informatics Research Group, recently delivered a talk at a CERN workshop in Geneva . The talk was based on the industry and academic perspectives on social media research ethics, and the also talk highlighted the approach that has been undertaken by the University of Sheffield.  Wasim Ahmed , pictured below, also presented a poster on his PhD research during the CERN workshop. Wasim’s poster was based on his PhD research which is examining how people talk about infectious disease outbreaks such as Swine Flu and Ebola on Twitter. Wasim also touched on the benefits of engaging with research blogs such as the LSE Impact blog .