Ethics, logs and videotape: ethics in large scale user trials and user generated content

WorkshopInternational audienceAs new technologies are appropriated by researchers, the community must come to terms with the evolving ethical responsibilities we have towards participants. This workshop brings together researchers to discuss the ethical issues of running large-scale user trials, and to provide guidance for future research. Trials of the scale of 10s or 100s of thousands of participants offer great potential benefits in terms of attracting users from vastly different geographical and social contexts, but raise significant ethical challenges. The inability to ensure user understanding of the information required to provide informed consent and problems involved in making users aware of the implications of the information being collected all beg the question: how can researchers ethically take advantage of the opportunities these new technologies afford