Facebook’s Emotional Contagion Experiment as a Challenge to Research Ethics
Jouhki, J., Lauk, E., Penttinen, M., Sormanen, N., & Uskali, T. (2016). Facebook’s Emotional Contagion Experiment as a Challenge to Research Ethics. Media and Communication, 4(4), 75-85. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v4i4.579
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Media and CommunicationDate
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© 2016 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).
This article analyzes the ethical discussion focusing on the Facebook emotional contagion experiment published by the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014. The massive-scale experiment manipulated the News Feeds
of a large amount of Facebook users and was successful in proving that emotional contagion happens also in online
environments. However, the experiment caused ethical concerns within and outside academia mainly for two
intertwined reasons, the first revolving around the idea of research as manipulation, and the second focusing on the
problematic definition of informed consent. The article concurs with recent research that the era of social media and
big data research are posing a significant challenge to research ethics, the practice and views of which are grounded in
the pre social media era, and reflect the classical ethical stances of utilitarianism and deontology.
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https://converis.jyu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/26260489
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © 2016 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).
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