Ethi(cs)quette of (Re)searching with E-friends: Clicking Towards a Social Media-driven Research Agenda

Social media increasingly shapes our professional and personal lives, leveraging its size, the potential for ubiquity, and real-time communication. Ranked the most popular social media platform by the number of subscribers, Facebook is increasingly gaining momentum as a research tool, mostly used to conduct surveys, adverts, and observation-driven research. However, Facebook’s potential for supporting consented qualitative research remains largely unexplored and deemed sometimes ethically questionable in the midst of ongoing debates around data protection rules and the ambiguity surrounding e-friendship meaning. This paper is based on an interpretative phenomenological Ph.D. study, between 2017-2020, aiming to deepen our understanding of London-based Romanian migrant entrepreneurs' experiences of social inclusion through entrepreneurship. This paper contributes to the literature on research methodology reflective practice of enabling ethical research, by outlining ethical implications of sampling via Facebook and when researching with e-friends as Facebook friends. It offers context-bound insights as guidance to researchers incorporating social media in their qualitative research The significance of this ethical research practice is discussed in terms of privacy, confidentiality, and informed consent as a cross point between GDPR regulatory framework, as universal research ethical framework, Facebook data privacy settings and the researcher’s reflective approach to mitigate ethical challenges experienced when recruiting Facebook e-friends.