Towards Incorporating Researcher Safety into Information Integrity Research Ethics

TL;DR

This paper addresses the gap in information integrity research by foregrounding researcher safety as an ethical concern in CSCW. It synthesizes prior work on harms to researchers and proposes institutional networks of support, stakeholder recognition, and participatory design as remedies. The authors discuss how the rapidly changing online landscape and access policies alter threat models, necessitating forward-looking ethical frameworks. The work provides actionable guidance for designing safer studies that protect researchers and strengthen the integrity of research in high-risk online environments.

Abstract

Traditional research ethics has mainly and rightly been focused on making sure that participants are treated safely, justly, and ethically, to avoid the violation of their rights or putting participants in harm's way. Information integrity research within CSCW has also correspondingly mainly focused on these issues, and the focus of internet research ethics has primarily focused on increasing protections of participant data. However, as branches of internet research focus on more fraught contexts such as information integrity and problematic information, more explicit consideration of other ethical frames and subjects is warranted. In this workshop paper, we argue that researcher protections should be more explicitly considered and acknowledged in these studies, and should be considered alongside more standard ethical considerations for participants and for broader society.