Ethical Issues in (Online) Social Network Research in Education

Bionotes: Moosung Lee is the youngest Centenary Professor, one of the most prestigious professorships, at the University of Canberra. Prior to joining the University of Canberra, he held appointments as Associate Professor and Founding Deputy Director of Education Policy Unit at the University of Hong Kong. He has published numerous articles in high quality academic outlets in the areas of educational leadership and administration, urban education, and comparative education. He was the winner of the AERA Emerging Scholar Award (Division A-Administration, Organization, Leadership) in 2015. Ewan Wright is engaged in doctoral research in the Faculty of Education at The University of Hong Kong, where he holds the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship. His educational background is in Sociology and Political Economy. Prior to joining The University of Hong Kong he worked with various think tanks in the UK and Hong Kong including Centre for Cities, Demos and Civic Exchange. His core research interests are based around inequalities in education, the massification of higher education, and transitions from higher education to employment. Abstract: In this article we discuss a relatively under-researched area in terms of research ethics, namely, social network research in education, including educational research focusing on social networking websites. Our discussion focuses on several key issues in social network research such as privacy in conjunction with anonymity, voluntary participation with foci on consent forms and second parties. In addition, we shed light on newly emerging issues from social media based research. In so doing, we call for more cautious approaches to social network data collection and analysis in education research.