UWM School of Information Studies joins groundbreaking study on big data ethics

Michael Zimmer, associate professor at the UWM School of Information Studies and director of the Center for Information Policy Research, will participate in a four year study of the ethics of “big data,” funded by a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

The project, PERVADE (Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research), brings together a multidisciplinary team with expertise in computational science, research ethics, data practices, law and policy, health information, social computing, qualitative and quantitative research methods, and data privacy.

“The project studies how diverse stakeholders — big data researchers, platforms, regulators and user communities — understand their ethical obligations and choices related to computational research that relies on big, pervasive data sets about people,” Zimmer said.

Zimmer, one of the seven principal investigators, will lead sub-projects focusing on ethical training and practices of computational researchers, as well as an assessment of the ethical components of large-scale data sharing initiatives among research scientists.

Zimmer is the co-editor, with Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda, of the recently published  “Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Challenges, Cases, and Contexts.”

Researchers from six institutions are participating in the PERVADE collaboration:

  • Katie Shilton — College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park
  • Jessica Vitak — College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park
  • Matthew Bietz — Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine
  • Casey Fiesler — Department of Information Science at University of Colorado, Boulder
  • Jacob Metcalf — Data & Society Research Institute
  • Arvind Narayanan — Department of Computer Science at Princeton University
  • Michael Zimmer — School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

The project’s research focus will extend across consumers, big data researchers, commercial providers and regulators, both domestically and internationally, to explore how these diverse stakeholders understand their ethical obligations and choices, and how their decisions affect data system design and use.

Specific issues that PERVADE team will examine include how people experience the reuse of their personal data; what social factors influence people’s willingness to share their data; how and when consent should be given; and how consumers’ concerns can be shared with data system designers and big data researchers.

“By empowering researchers with information about the norms and risks of big data research, we can make sure that users of any digital platform are only involved in research in ways they don’t find surprising or unfair,” said Shilton, associate professor in the College of Information Studies at UMD and primary investigator on the grant.

The team aims to use project findings to guide best practices for each stakeholder group using decision-support tools, risk measurement methods, public educational materials, and an open dataset of findings by the end of the project in 2021.

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