Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

SMERF: Social Media, Ethics and Risk Framework

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Cyber Criminology

Abstract

SMERF is a proposed framework to support researchers and investigators in risk assessment when working with Social Media (SM). The aim of SMERF is to mitigate risk, by identifying it a priori. Risk assessment is considered where there is a potential danger involved in undertaking SM-related projects, which may include Digital Investigations and undergraduate or postgraduate projects. The vulnerbilities of the researcher or investigator that conduct SM-related work is discussed and what types of threats they may be exposed to are described. These are related to current counter-terrorim laws, data protection regulations and acceptable use policies. SMERF is proposed to mitigate risks that the investigator or researcher and their associated organisations maybe exposed to. The development of SMERF is agile and therefore has the ability to adapt to different organisations’ requirements. Finally, a quality assurance and risk assessment life-cycle is proposed and recommendations are for SMERF to be reviewed annually and updated appropriately.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Definition of trolling:“…intentionally posting provocative messages about sensitive subject to create conflict, upset people, and bait them…”(Zainudin et al. 2016). For further classifications on trolling, see Bishop (2012).

  2. 2.

    Natural Language Processing defines stemming as identifying the same words with different affixes, see Bird et al. (2009, Ch.3.), e.g. lie and lying.

References

  • ACM. (2017). ACM code of ethics and professional conduct. https://www.acm.org/about-acm/acm-code-of-ethics-and-professional-conduct. Accessed June 16, 2017.

  • Aragon, A., AlDoubi, S., Kaminski, K., Anderson, S.K., & Isaacs, N. (2014). Social networking: Boundaries and limits part 1: Ethics. TechTrends, 58(2), 25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), 15–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Backstrom, L., & Kleinberg, J. (2014). Romantic partnerships and the dispersion of social ties: A network analysis of relationship status on facebook. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (pp. 831–841). ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Balduzzi, M., Platzer, C., Holz, T., Kirda, E., Balzarotti, D., & Kruegel, C. (2010). Abusing social networks for automated user profiling. In International Workshop on Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection (pp. 422–441). Springer

    Google Scholar 

  • BCS: Code of conduct. (2017). http://www.bcs.org/category/6030. Accessed June 16, 2017.

  • Beninger, K., Fry, A., Jago, N., Lepps, H., Nass, L., & Silvester, H. (2014). Research using social media; users’ views. National Centre for Social Research.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beurskens, M. (2014). Legal questions of twitter research. In K. Weller (Ed.), Twitter and society (p. 123). New York: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bird, S., Klein, E., & Loper, E. (2009). Natural language processing with Python: Analyzing text with the natural language toolkit. Beijing: O’Reilly Media, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bishop, J. (2012). Tackling Internet abuse in Great Britain: Towards a framework for classifying severities of ‘flame trolling’. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Security and Management (SAM) (p. 1). The Steering Committee of The World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Applied Computing (WorldComp).

    Google Scholar 

  • Carter, C. (2014). Twitter troll jailed for ‘campaign of hatred’ against Stella Creasy. The Daily Telegraph.

    Google Scholar 

  • Council of European Union. (2018). Council regulation (EU) no 2016/679. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/LSU/?uri=CELEX%3A32016R0679. Accessed on June 25, 2017.

  • CT&S. (2015). Counter Terrorism & Security Act. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/6/contents/enacted. Accessed on June 15, 2017.

  • Gerbaudo, P., & Treré, E. (2015). In search of the ‘we’ of social media activism: Introduction to the special issue on social media and protest identities. Information, Communication & Society, 18(8), 865–871.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Granville, K. (2018). Facebook and cambridge analytica: What you need to know as fallout widens. The New York Times.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groth, G. G., Longo, L. M., & Martin, J. L. (2017). Social media and college student risk behaviors: A mini-review. Addictive Behaviors, 65, 87–91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gu, B., & Ye, Q. (2014). First step in social media: Measuring the influence of online management responses on customer satisfaction. Production and Operations Management, 23(4), 570–582.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J. W. (2010). Cyberbullying: Identification, prevention, and response. Cyberbullying Research Center.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoff, D. L., & Mitchell, S. N. (2009). Cyberbullying: Causes, effects, and remedies. Journal of Educational Administration, 47(5), 652–665.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Home Office. (2015a). Prevent duty guidance: For higher education institutions in England and Wales. UK Govt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Home Office. (2015b). Prevent duty guidance: For higher education institutions in Scotland. UK Govt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irvin, E., Taper, C., Igoe, L., & Pastore, R. S. (2015). Using Twitter in an undergraduate setting: Five recommendations from a foreign language class. eLearn 11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Isaacs, N., Kaminski, K., Aragon, A., & Anderson, S. K. (2014). Social networking: Boundaries and limitations part 2: Policy. TechTrends 58(3), 10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Korda, H., & Itani, Z. (2013). Harnessing social media for health promotion and behavior change. Health Promotion Practice, 14(1), 15–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, K., Kaufman, J., Gonzalez, M., Wimmer, A., & Christakis, N. (2008). Tastes, ties and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook. Social Networks, 30(4), 330–342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lin, M. F. G., Hoffman, E. S., & Borengasser, C. (2013). Is social media too social for class? A case study of Twitter use. TechTrends, 57(2), 39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Markham, A. (2012). AOIR guidelines: Ethical decision making and Internet research ethics (Technical report). Association of Internet Research.

    Google Scholar 

  • Markham, A., & Buchanan, E. (2012). Ethical decision-making and Internet research (Technical report). Association of Internet Research (AoIR).

    Google Scholar 

  • Morgan, E. M., Snelson, C., & Elison-Bowers, P. (2010) Image and video disclosure of substance use on social media websites. Computers in Human Behavior, 26, 1405–1411.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Munar, A. M., & Jacobsen, J. K. S. (2014). Motivations for sharing tourism experiences through social media. Tourism Management, 43, 46–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Newman, M. (2010). Networks: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • OfCom. (2016). Adults’ media use and attitudes. Office of Communications (April 2016).

    Google Scholar 

  • Pyżalski, J. (2012). From cyberbullying to electronic aggression: Typology of the phenomenon. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 17(3–4), 305–317.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rivers, C. M., & Lewis, B. L. (2014). Ethical research standards in a world of big data. F1000Research, 3.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sambrook, R. (2017). Taking the bait: The quest for instant gratification online is seriously compromising news reporting. Index on Censorship 46(1), 16–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • UKCCIS. (2010). Child safety online: A practical guide for parent and carers whose children are using social media. UK Govt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Universities UK. (2012). Oversight of seucrity-sensitive research material in UK Universities (Technical report). UUK (October 2012).

    Google Scholar 

  • Weale, S. (2018). Suicide is a sector-wide issue, says Bristol university vice-chancellor. The Guardian (Feb 2018).

    Google Scholar 

  • Whittaker, E., & Kowalski, R. M. (2015). Cyberbullying via social media. Journal of School Violence 14(1), 11–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, M. L., Burnap, P., & Sloan, L. (2017). Towards an ethical framework for publishing twitter data in social research: Taking into account users’ views, online context and algorithmic estimation. Sociology, 51, 1–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wondracek, G., Holz, T., Kirda, E., & Kruegel, C. (2010). A practical attack to de-anonymize social network users. In 2010 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP) (pp. 223–238). IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zainudin, N. M., Zainal, K. H., Hasbullah, N. A., Wahab, N. A., & Ramli, S. (2016). A review on cyberbullying in Malaysia from digital forensic perspective. In International Conference on Information and Communication Technology (ICICTM) (pp. 246–250). IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zimmer, M. (2010). “But data is already public”: On the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics Information Technology, 12, 313–325.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Middlesex University, London, UK

    Ian Mitchell, Tracey Cockerton, Sukhvinder Hara & Carl Evans

Authors
  1. Ian Mitchell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Tracey Cockerton
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sukhvinder Hara
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Carl Evans
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ian Mitchell .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. QAHE and Northumbria University London, London, UK

    Hamid Jahankhani

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Mitchell, I., Cockerton, T., Hara, S., Evans, C. (2018). SMERF: Social Media, Ethics and Risk Framework. In: Jahankhani, H. (eds) Cyber Criminology. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97181-0_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97181-0_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97180-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97181-0

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation