Data Ethics in Research: Pervasive Data, Elusive Trust: Rethinking Data Ethics for Researchers

Data Ethics in Research Seminar Series

Pervasive Data, Elusive Trust: Rethinking Data Ethics for Researchers

Dr. Katie Shilton, College of Information Studies, University of Maryland

Ongoing scandals and public uproar over research that uses pervasive data – information about people generated through digital interaction, available for computational analysis – demonstrates the challenges of defining and demonstrating acceptable, trustworthy digital data research practices. This talk will review problems of trustworthiness in pervasive data research and draw from the history of another research methodology that has struggled with trustworthiness – ethnography – to suggest a way forward: analytic lenses and researcher practices necessary for establishing trustworthy data science.