In this article, I thought about ethical neutrality. When conducting their experiment they used field work, the study with the most ethical concerns. Because they only used the information they needed when using an individual’s data I think they were ethical in this study. Determinism is another principle that is present in this study. During the experiment the cause of these tweets was COVID-19.
The article I chose did not have a straightforward question or hypothesis but after reading, this group of scientists created a digital footprint to identify malicious collusive groups on Twitter. By using this footprint they hypothesized that they would be able to see patterns in accounts that use similar tools in creating their attack vector, accounts created with similar account characteristics, accounts with the same set of people writing posted content or posting identical content, and accounts with similar interaction patterns between them.
The methodology they used was data collecting. They collected only COVID-19-related tweets between March 11th, 2020, and March 21st, 2020. They selected a short time frame to ensure they captured the immediate activities of any colluding actors within a specific period. They also data collected every day to capture all user’s activity during that timeframe.
A concept from class that relates to this article is criminology. This relates to this article because they are creating this digital footprint to track malicious activity and by making these findings they have identified Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook to be recruiting and training grounds for deep covert terrorist activities and used as communication mediums for sleeper cells. Field research is another term that was used in this study. They practiced complete observation because no one knew they were using these digital footprints and collecting all their tweets, but this type of research has the most ethical issues because the individuals are not aware, and could be an invasion of privacy. Another research that they used was a case study. I only say this because they only focused on tweets relating to COVID-19 so that is only focusing on one big event. When discussing psychological factors increasing the risk of offending I think aggression could be the main one in this article because they’re collecting data from tweets involving COVID-19 and we all know how hot the debates would get.
The biggest contribution this study is making to marginalized groups is how they’re moving forward to finding and stopping terrorist groups. Terrorist groups are used against marginalized groups and stopping this communication medium could slowly but surely stop terrorist activities. Besides just helping marginalized groups in third-world countries this technology they created could also help story cyberbullying. By identifying malicious collusive groups they can stop accounts from saying or doing these things.
The biggest contribution to society would be the safety aspect of it. After creating these digital footprints you can not only find the maker of nasty tweets you can also see and stop things such as terrorists.
https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article/9/1/tyad014/7240368?searchresult=1