Data protection and consumer research has
always been a bit of a blur. Technology has confounded this and the so-called
mobile revolution will create a series of new tests for the industry.
To paraphrase Bill Gates: If your systems
are already chaotic, computers will make them even more chaotic. If your
systems are organised, then computers will make them even more organised.
In other words, whatever state your
organisation is in, computers will simply amplify that state.
While Bill’s quote seems adept to data
protection & consumer research issues on PC’s, it also raises questions
around the use of mobile ethno/qualitative research tools and how we need to
think about privacy issues on these connected devices.
Let’s begin with the participant who is
keen to earn some quick cash (and let’s face it, MR incentives are a source of
quick cash), they will allow researchers and their clients into their home, to
film the contents of their fridge, ask them about their feelings on a given
topic and then pay an incentive in return for signing away any rights to
everything captured of them, forever.
But while this is great for the purposes
of research, it’s important to note that there are more than a few points they
won’t have counted on, such as:
• Research filming their neighbour who unexpectedly pops in for a cup of
tea, but didn’t sign a release form (the panelist might have forgotten or not
had enough spares).
• Their best friend’s children come over to play with their kids and the
researcher wants to capture the moment before obtaining permission from the
friend.
• The respondent might talk about something they felt uncomfortable
about and subsequently might wish they hadn’t shared.
• Footage might have filmed them taking out their credit card and left
them worried about whether or not the research firm would then pixelate their
card details during editing.
At the heart of the problem for the
respondent is an almost certain reluctance to raise any of the above concerns
in case the incentive payers felt disappointed and didn’t ask them to take part
in a project again.
This is an example where consent is
expressed, but not given internally. Such informed consent implies none of the
above events will ever take place and that respondents will always feel
completely at ease with the way their data is downloadable from the hard drives
of client and agency side organisations.
In my view, this is the awkward,
uncommunicative twin sibling of transparency. And transparency, in a world
where digital tools are evolving too fast for any guidelines to stay abreast of
them, is the only way to make any progress in the context of data privacy and
ethics.
In other words, informed consent may
still be required, legally, but transparency is ethically much more sound when
it comes to research participants feeling comfortable by knowing who is seeing
their data.
My argument, however, is that using
mobile tools we can give ownership to repondents themselves. And we are
fortunate enough to live in a time when mobile research platforms can offer
participants this transparency.
The difference with mobile research
methods and other research methods is that participants are usually capturing
their own lives using their own smartphones. And by definition, they are editing/censoring,
perhaps unconsciously, what they share with the researcher.
However, despite the control participants
think they hold over their content, when combined with the aforementioned
issues, mobile tools can compound the issue of privacy and data and protection.
For example:
• The respondent has no idea who else has been invited to view the
project on the mobile research platform.
• They will not know who in the future will be invited to look at their
content
• They will have no idea about who has downloaded and further shared
their content with a broader audience, perhaps outside of that organisation
Putting workable informed consent into
practice on a mobile device would be impossible in the above situations, even
if you exercise the ‘right to forget’ and delete everything from the server.
The reason for this is that clips of the
participant can still remain on individual hard drives from earlier
downloads.
Let’s be clear on a simple point; data
protection is a basic human right. Not just a nice to have. The right to be
forgotten is also a basic human right. Yet mission creep, when one’s data is
used for a reason other than originally agreed, no matter how vaguely agreed,
is impossible to allow for without giving all of your rights away and
impossible to keep track of.
So how do we even begin to protect
research respondents whose lives are stored on a mobile research platform? How
do we ‘forget’ about a respondent whose content may be on countless hard drives
three years after they first took part in a study? The answer is that you
simply can’t. It is simply just not possible.
Yet the very advances in digital
qualitative/ethnographic research that are amplifying the challenges of data
protection and privacy, may also come to its rescue. We at EthOS, for example,
are experimenting with tacit updates to provide hitherto impossible-to-achieve
levels of transparency.
Owners can toggle on a permission feature
during or after a study has been completed. Participants may now see not only
who has downloaded their content; but for what reason and for which audience.
They can also ask the downloader more questions if they wish.
But, critically, and once beta testing is
over, they will also be able to refuse permission to download. In the meantime
they receive alerts and quarterly download digests with explanations and
contacts. The onus will then be on the downloader to comply with the user’s
request avoiding any risk of mission creep from occurring.
The days of large organisations exerting complete
control over participant data is disappearing. Participants are more
knowledgeable about their rights and far less accepting of inflexible release
forms which although legally sound, are ethically unsound, forcing them to be the
gagged partner in what should be a two-way conversation between them and the
researchers.
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