Published Online in: Educational Researcher November 2, 2022
Joshua M. Rosenberg, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Conrad Borchers, University of Oxford Macy A. Burchfield, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Daniel Anderson, Abl Schools Sonda Stegenga, University of Utah Christian Fischer, University of Tübingen
Public schools and districts use social media to share announcements and communicate with parents and the community, but alongside such uses run risks to students’ privacy. Using a novel data set of 18 million posts on Facebook by schools and school districts in the United States, we sought to establish how frequently photos of students were shared. Through sequential mixed-methods, we estimated that around 4.9 million posts included identifiable images of students and that approximately 726,000 of these posts also included students’ first and last names and their approximate location. We discuss these findings’ implications from a data ethics perspective.
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Study Citation: Rosenberg, J. M., Borchers, C., Burchfield, M. A., Anderson, D., Stegenga, S. M., & Fischer, C. (2022). Posts about students on Facebook: A data ethics perspective. Educational Researcher. Prepublished November 2, 2022. https://www.doi.org/10.3102/0013189X221120538.
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Posts About Students on Facebook: A Data Ethics Perspective