Should we be able to use Twitter data in research?
To get my audience thinking about this question, I prompted them with two different points of view.
We should be able to use Twitter data
One argument here is that Twitter data is public, so austria rcs data the question of whether we should be able to use it is itself redundant. Arguably, the purpose of any social media platform is to give user content some exposure. Users who post insensitive content should “know better”, and if they don’t want to get in trouble for posting inappropriate content they simply shouldn’t do it.
All social media data is valuable and offers any user a wealth of insights into, say, the public perception of personal comments, a political party, a share price, and beyond. Why should we ignore such a powerful dataset over what some see as a small privacy concern?
In short, this is public data, so we can ignore GDPR, future data legislation, and morals.
We shouldn’t be able to use Twitter data
Not all users want their content to be observed at scale or even realise they are opening themselves to the potential misuse of their personal data. Consider the following:
Do children understand how their data will be used?