What am I reading in ScholarWorks? August 2024

For this month’s What Am I Reading in ScholarWorks? I wanted to share a 2016 article that has relevance to current issues of ethics around research in general and social media in particular.

Sociology professor, Timothy Recuber’s “From Obedience to Contagion: Discourses of Power in Milgram, Zimbardo, and the Facebook Experiment” is an important and really interesting examination of the ethical conduct of researchers and the implications for social media—not just as a site for experimental manipulation in a research setting, but as a site of experimental manipulation full stop. By comparing the Facebook Experiment to the infamous Milgram obedience experiment and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, Recuber gets to the heart of the present-day slippage of ethics that social media companies have amplified. Examining the language used by the experimenters and the stated justifications for such experiments forces a consideration of social media as a site of opaque manipulation that has only worsened in the intervening years. As Recuber states: “Today, such experimentation is a part of our everyday lives.” I would only add that if I had a magic wand every person would be required to study ethics. Happily, everyone can at least read this paper! Enjoy!

To view this work in Scholarworks visit: https://scholarworks.smith.edu/soc_facpubs/7/

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