Question

What potential ethical and legal challenges are there to using social media sources for public health or health service surveillance? Please explain in more detail.

Answer 1

Answer: Social media is one of the best platform to spread awareness among people about the health care and the diseases. Good research practice fortifies high-quality science; ethical standards, including integrity; and the professionalism of those conducting the research. Importantly, it ensures the confidentiality and privacy of information collected from individuals participating in the research .

Compared to face-to-face encounters, social media connections erase any geographical boundaries and make social cues of limited use. Depending on users’ privacy settings, their personal profiles may be exposed to other users from other cultures, communities, and different walks of life who are included in the social network but are not known to them. there are emerging ethical and professional concerns and risks inherent in social media research that should be carefully evaluated and addressed—particularly regarding confidentiality, privacy, and consent. While these issues present challenges to institutional ethical research review committees and researchers, to the author’s knowledge, currently no US professional societies have issued guidelines or regulations addressing these rising ethical concerns. There should be proper rules and regulations for this.