Cybersecurity Challenges in Social Media Erdal Ozkaya

5.8
 
Ethical considerations 
The research was strict on ensuring that there were little or no ethical issues that came 
up. This was obvious since the research was studying an unethical practice by social media 
platforms. Where ethical issues arose, there were ready mitigation measures in place that 

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would be implemented. The following is a discussion of these ethical issues and their 
mitigation: 
Use of participants’ time – The respondents may have had some concerns on the time 
that they would spend filling the online questionnaire. This was fully understood as they 
would be breaking away from their activities and putting efforts into completing the 20-30 
minute questionnaire. To avoid upsetting the respondents, they were informed, at the 
sampling stage, the duration that the questionnaire would take and that they were free to opt 
out at any time. The participants were also informed beforehand that there would be no 
rewards given other than an honest vote of thanks. 
Identity of the participants – Since the respondents would receive the questionnaire 
form through their emails and fill it on their browsers, there were ethical considerations on 
whether the form would collect their personal information or store cookies in their browsers. 
To mitigate this, the questionnaire was configured not to collect the details of the persons that 
filled them. Participants were also informed that the form would temporarily store cookies as 
they filled the forms by Google. They were also informed that it was a standard practice for 
all Google services and this cookie data was not to be used by or for the purposes of the 
research. 
Intellectual property – There were concerns that some of the participants would claim 
the data they gave during the research as their intellectual property. To mitigate this, the form 
had a disclaimer that informed the respondents that their contributions were merely for 
observation of trends and individual contributions would not be published. Also, the 
respondents were not asked to contribute solutions to the problem that was being researched, 
something that closed the avenues for intellectual property claims. 

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