Sharing selves: Developing an ethical framework for curating social media data

Abstract

Open sharing of social media data raises new ethical questions that researchers, repositories, and data curators must confront, with little existing guidance available. In this paper, the authors draw upon their experiences in their multiple roles as data curators, academic librarians, and researchers to propose the STEP framework for curating and sharing social media data. The framework is intended to be used by data curators facilitating open publication of social media data. Two case studies from the Dryad Digital Repository serve to demonstrate implementation of the STEP framework. The STEP framework can serve as one important "step" along the path to achieving safe, ethical, and reproducible social media research practice.