Social Media Data Ethics: Grounding our Values and Localizing Best Better Practices.

This event aims to bring together members of the Pitt community for an interactive conversation regarding ethics and social media data. Two presenters - Lara Putnam and Elise Silva - will summarize the range of best practice guides that have already been developed on this topic and share a curated, annotated set of these external resources as a starting point with the hope of opening conversation. They hope specifically to localize this discussion around what tools, resources, and/or potential curricular vehicles Pitt teachers, mentors, and scholars feel they need in this rapidly changing arena. Our third presenter - Frances Corry - will then explore how values/ethics are expressed and mobilized by social media platform employees as they handle user data in the platform sunsetting process, providing another framework for thinking through the kinds of data that are generated and stored in social media platforms.

How are social media data used or generated in your disciplinary practices? What ethical concerns might we face across disciplinary boundaries when working with social media data? Join us for this conversation to learn more and connect with other Pitt community members interested in ethical approaches to social media data.

Speakers:

• Lara Putnam, UCIS Professor (History), Director of the Global Studies Center, and Co-lead for the Civic Resilience Initiative of the Pitt Disinformation Lab
• Elise Silva, Postdoctoral Associate with Pitt Cyber’s Disinformation Lab and the Western PA Writing Project
• Frances Corry, Assistant Professor of Information Culture and Data Stewardship