Ethics of using big data in humanities and social science research

Smart-phones and other digital devices provide unprecedented opportunities to extract data about humans. This opportunity is paralleled with the development of data-mining methods that allow analysing and comparing groups of people and their behavior. As the use of these data sets and analytical methods become more prevalent in conducting research, established ethical principles may fail to protect human participants. By taking a closer look at the current principles of research involving human subjects, this talk will focus on the challenges of addressing and enforcing ethical norms within humanities and social science research projects that use big data.