Research Ethics in the Age of Digital Platforms

Abstract

Scientific research is growingly increasingly reliant on "microwork" or "crowdsourcing" provided by digital platforms to collect new data. Digital platforms connect clients and workers, charging a fee for an algorithmically managed workflow based on Terms of Service agreements. Although these platforms offer a way to make a living or complement other sources of income, microworkers lack fundamental labor rights and basic safe working conditions, especially in the Global South. We ask how researchers and research institutions address the ethical issues involved in considering microworkers as "human participants." We argue that current scientific research fails to treat microworkers in the same way as in-person human participants, producing de facto a double morality: one applied to people with rights acknowledged by states and international bodies (e.g., the Helsinki Declaration), the other to guest workers of digital autocracies who have almost no rights at all. We illustrate our argument by drawing on 57 interviews conducted with microworkers in Spanish-speaking countries.

Diverse sources of normativity in open science and their implications for ethical governance

“…Ethical and methodological challenges have also been associated with citizen science practices [18][19][20]. One pertains to the potentially exploitative nature of some citizen science projects where participants have been contributing in terms of their time and resources but may not have been adequately acknowledged or compensated (or perhaps even aware of their participation) [21,22]. Participation of citizen scientists (in itself a heterogeneous concept [23]) may blur the well-established regulatory ethics boundaries separating researchers from research subjects, with possible implications for the integrity of research results [24].…”