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Facebook study of "emotional contagion" turns users into subjects

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In July 2014, a study conducted by Adam D. I. Kramer (Facebook), Jamie E. Guillory, and Jeffrey T. Hancock (both Cornell University) and published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences alerted Facebook users to the fact that for one week in 2012 689,003 of them had been the subjects of research into "emotional contagion". In the study, the researchers changed randomly selected users' newsfeeds to be more positive or negative to study whether those users then displayed a more positive or negative affect in response. The study found that they did - and also found that lowering the level of emotional content in either direction correlated with users posting less to the site. The experiment also showed the power of Facebook's control over the News Feed and the algorithms that determine which of the possible 1,500 pieces of content shows up at the top at any given moment.

Although the researchers did not change or read any of the postings and the original content was always available elsewhere, the fact that users were being manipulated incited public controversy. Under the terms of the prevailing privacy policy, the experiment was almost certainly legal; however few thought it was ethical. In a purely academic setting, such a study would normally be reviewed by the university's Institutional Review Board; however, in this case Cornell said that because Facebook was responsible for collecting and analyzing the data - and because the week-long experiment had already been conducted - no review from its Human Research Protection Program was required. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2014/jul/01/facebook-cornell-study-emotional-contagion-ethics-breach
tags: Facebook, Cornell, research, emotional contagion, algorithms, engagement, experiments
Writer: Robinson Meyer, Chris Chambers
Publication: The Atlantic, Guardian
 

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