The Royal Statistical Society Data Governance and Ethics Section is hosting a series of panel discussions on ‘International approaches to the legal, governance and ethical challenges of social media and digital behavioural data for researchers and research infrastructures’.

These virtual panels will bring together researchers and data governance experts from across Europe, the US and Australia to discuss the often complex and intertwined challenges of working with these types of data and how different regions are approaching these. Speakers include Professor Luke Sloan (Cardiff University & Deputy Director of the Social Data Science Lab), Professor Jean Burgess (Queensland University of Technology, Digital Media Research Centre) and Dr Michael Zimmer (Director of Center for Data, Ethics, and Society, Marquette University). 
 
The format for each panel will be a short provocation from each speaker, followed by a moderated group discussion. There will be some time held at the end for questions from the audience.  

Some of the questions that we hope to touch on across the 3 discussions include:

1.           What are the legal, governance and ethical challenges of working with digital behavioural data? How do they vary across different countries and legislative    frameworks?
2.           What kinds of tensions have these challenges raised for those working with these data, both for the research community and for those in data governance services?
3.           What lessons have we learned about the data governance and research practices required to work with these data?
4.           What can we learn for the future?
 

Deborah Wiltshire for RSS Data Ethics & Governance Section.

These sessions have been organised in collaboration with GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Smart Data Research UK and the Australian Research Data Commons.