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Center for Media Engagement | April 2024
Over the past two decades, academic research on digital platforms — such as social media, websites, blog posts, and digitized content — has proliferated. But how do we know if these studies are conducted ethically? And what does it mean to conduct “ethical research” in the context of studying digital platforms?
This report lays out the state of current platform studies ethics, the challenges of building ethical frameworks for this type of research, and potential solutions as proposed by researchers studying digital platforms and research ethics. Interviews with academic researchers emphasize the need for building consensus, ideally through coalitions, and for supporting research infrastructure that prioritizes clear and transparent ethical practices.
What is clear from the findings is that researchers, platform users, companies, politicians, and funders must work together to support ethical research practices that are flexible and yet guided by the shared principles of research for the public and minimizing user harm.
CAT Lab | March 2024
Independent research that investigates the impact of technology on individuals and society is increasingly under attack. These attacks, which come from powerful entities such as platform companies and policymakers, oen appeal to the public's fears of privacy and ethical violations. While some of these appeals are more credible than others, they have prompted restrictions on independent research by limiting access to essential data, having chilling effects on researchers, and blocking research itself. To make public-interest research resilient to these attacks, we need to understand the threats faced by researchers, actual risks to the public, risk-management practices by researchers, and crucial gaps that need to be filled. Independent research, uninfluenced by the tech industry, investigates digital environments. Independent researchers are academics, civil society actors, journalists, and citizens. Our report is based on interviews with 14 independent researchers outside of academia, focusing on research conducted by civil society organizations, journalists, and community scientists. In this report, we investigate threats and risks to independent research on digital technologies and offer recommendations for managing them.
In September 2021, the NetGain Partnership initiated a research process designed to explore finance-focused strategies that would hold leading internet platforms accountable and create a healthier digital public sphere. In April 2022, the partnership commissioned Open MIC and Whistle Stop Capital to produce a series of reports that addressed those issues. Since then, the research teams have conducted interviews with more than 40 practitioners, analysts, and observers of shareholder engagement and finance-focused strategies in the global technology sector. The research teams have also explored current tactics and strategies employed in the finance-sector globally to check the power and harmful behaviors of Big Tech companies. The resulting reports summarized key learnings from the research, and provided recommendations for philanthropy’s role in advancing finance-focused strategies. This executive summary is designed to provide a high-level overview of the research and findings in an accessible format for peer funders and other interested stakeholders.
Whistle Stop Capital | December 2023
Significant opportunities exist to utilize investor influence to encourage technology companies to take greater accountability for their societal impacts. However, the necessary infrastructure is missing. Tools that have proven successful in past investor engagements must be developed and tailored in new ways. These efforts will be more effective if the broader environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investment ecosystem is also strengthened. Foundations are able to play a unique and catalytic role in providing capital and leadership, as grantors and as investors themselves.
Whistle Stop Capital | December 2023
Key indicators and their associated infrastructure are an essential aspect of a shareholder engagement campaign. Investors need a system that allows them to compare and benchmark companies – both against their peers and relative to their own performance over time. In this report, key indicators are divided into two component parts, with the portion focused on governance and oversight applicable across all issue areas. The second component part is tailored specifically towards quantifying privacy policies and practices.
Whistle Stop Capital | December 2023
To only invest to preserve capital, or to beat the market, is now at odds with best-practice investing. Investors now allow for more complexity and nuance when they consider environmental and social topics. There is a greater understanding of the financial value that sustainability leadership might bring to a company and to the broader health of an investment portfolio. This more nuanced perspective is the result of long hours and multi-faceted coalition-focused efforts by investors and activists.
To better understand the tools and efforts that led to successful change, Whistle Stop Capital examined case studies and identified eight key tools investors have used to push publicly traded companies to change their practices.
Open MIC | December 2023
A dramatic growth in ESG investing in recent years has created momentum for successful shareholder engagement across multiple industry sectors, including technology, where investor advocates are successfully pressuring companies for accountability on a range of critical digital issues — from privacy and artificial intelligence to surveillance and racial equity.
As shareholder engagement on digital issues matures, there’s need for greater coordination and action by advocacy organizations across a broad range of potential “finance-focused” initiatives, which will entail focused and long-term support from the philanthropic community.
Open MIC | December 2023
Two sources of private capital - venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) - play critical roles in the overall economy of the tech sector. VC firms typically fund ventures in the early stages of a company’s development; PE firms typically acquire or help fund more mature ventures.
The high degree of leverage that private capital actors hold over the tech sector at its most formative stages presents a high impact opportunity to shift the negative drivers that are impeding entrepreneurs from becoming leaders in responsible tech.
Open MIC | December 2023
For responsible tech investment to be feasible, investors need reliable information on how companies manage their impacts on digital and other human rights. There is an opportunity to bolster the leverage of responsible investors interested in promoting greater accountability in the tech sector by increasing transparency and regulation around mainstream ESG products and by redressing the ESG data deficit on tech-specific impacts through investor-friendly standards and metrics that accurately assess the human rights risks of the digital era.
Open MIC | December 2023
Companies and public service providers have adopted AI systems at such a rapid rate that these tools can now be found in nearly every industry and public sector. This widespread adoption is exposing communities to potential bias and rights violations, while also introducing new legal, financial, and reputational risks for companies.
Investors have an opportunity to support the evolution of specific, operationalizable ethical AI standards by demanding transparency regarding these “black box” technologies and the processes companies use to develop, assess, and deploy them.
Center for Media Engagement | April 2024
Over the past two decades, academic research on digital platforms — such as social media, websites, blog posts, and digitized content — has proliferated. But how do we know if these studies are conducted ethically? And what does it mean to conduct “ethical research” in the context of studying digital platforms?
This report lays out the state of current platform studies ethics, the challenges of building ethical frameworks for this type of research, and potential solutions as proposed by researchers studying digital platforms and research ethics. Interviews with academic researchers emphasize the need for building consensus, ideally through coalitions, and for supporting research infrastructure that prioritizes clear and transparent ethical practices.
What is clear from the findings is that researchers, platform users, companies, politicians, and funders must work together to support ethical research practices that are flexible and yet guided by the shared principles of research for the public and minimizing user harm.
CAT Lab | March 2024
Independent research that investigates the impact of technology on individuals and society is increasingly under attack. These attacks, which come from powerful entities such as platform companies and policymakers, oen appeal to the public's fears of privacy and ethical violations. While some of these appeals are more credible than others, they have prompted restrictions on independent research by limiting access to essential data, having chilling effects on researchers, and blocking research itself. To make public-interest research resilient to these attacks, we need to understand the threats faced by researchers, actual risks to the public, risk-management practices by researchers, and crucial gaps that need to be filled. Independent research, uninfluenced by the tech industry, investigates digital environments. Independent researchers are academics, civil society actors, journalists, and citizens. Our report is based on interviews with 14 independent researchers outside of academia, focusing on research conducted by civil society organizations, journalists, and community scientists. In this report, we investigate threats and risks to independent research on digital technologies and offer recommendations for managing them.
In September 2021, the NetGain Partnership initiated a research process designed to explore finance-focused strategies that would hold leading internet platforms accountable and create a healthier digital public sphere. In April 2022, the partnership commissioned Open MIC and Whistle Stop Capital to produce a series of reports that addressed those issues. Since then, the research teams have conducted interviews with more than 40 practitioners, analysts, and observers of shareholder engagement and finance-focused strategies in the global technology sector. The research teams have also explored current tactics and strategies employed in the finance-sector globally to check the power and harmful behaviors of Big Tech companies. The resulting reports summarized key learnings from the research, and provided recommendations for philanthropy’s role in advancing finance-focused strategies. This executive summary is designed to provide a high-level overview of the research and findings in an accessible format for peer funders and other interested stakeholders.
Whistle Stop Capital | December 2023
Significant opportunities exist to utilize investor influence to encourage technology companies to take greater accountability for their societal impacts. However, the necessary infrastructure is missing. Tools that have proven successful in past investor engagements must be developed and tailored in new ways. These efforts will be more effective if the broader environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investment ecosystem is also strengthened. Foundations are able to play a unique and catalytic role in providing capital and leadership, as grantors and as investors themselves.
Whistle Stop Capital | December 2023
Key indicators and their associated infrastructure are an essential aspect of a shareholder engagement campaign. Investors need a system that allows them to compare and benchmark companies – both against their peers and relative to their own performance over time. In this report, key indicators are divided into two component parts, with the portion focused on governance and oversight applicable across all issue areas. The second component part is tailored specifically towards quantifying privacy policies and practices.
Whistle Stop Capital | December 2023
To only invest to preserve capital, or to beat the market, is now at odds with best-practice investing. Investors now allow for more complexity and nuance when they consider environmental and social topics. There is a greater understanding of the financial value that sustainability leadership might bring to a company and to the broader health of an investment portfolio. This more nuanced perspective is the result of long hours and multi-faceted coalition-focused efforts by investors and activists.
To better understand the tools and efforts that led to successful change, Whistle Stop Capital examined case studies and identified eight key tools investors have used to push publicly traded companies to change their practices.
Open MIC | December 2023
A dramatic growth in ESG investing in recent years has created momentum for successful shareholder engagement across multiple industry sectors, including technology, where investor advocates are successfully pressuring companies for accountability on a range of critical digital issues — from privacy and artificial intelligence to surveillance and racial equity.
As shareholder engagement on digital issues matures, there’s need for greater coordination and action by advocacy organizations across a broad range of potential “finance-focused” initiatives, which will entail focused and long-term support from the philanthropic community.
Open MIC | December 2023
Two sources of private capital - venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) - play critical roles in the overall economy of the tech sector. VC firms typically fund ventures in the early stages of a company’s development; PE firms typically acquire or help fund more mature ventures.
The high degree of leverage that private capital actors hold over the tech sector at its most formative stages presents a high impact opportunity to shift the negative drivers that are impeding entrepreneurs from becoming leaders in responsible tech.
Open MIC | December 2023
For responsible tech investment to be feasible, investors need reliable information on how companies manage their impacts on digital and other human rights. There is an opportunity to bolster the leverage of responsible investors interested in promoting greater accountability in the tech sector by increasing transparency and regulation around mainstream ESG products and by redressing the ESG data deficit on tech-specific impacts through investor-friendly standards and metrics that accurately assess the human rights risks of the digital era.
Open MIC | December 2023
Companies and public service providers have adopted AI systems at such a rapid rate that these tools can now be found in nearly every industry and public sector. This widespread adoption is exposing communities to potential bias and rights violations, while also introducing new legal, financial, and reputational risks for companies.
Investors have an opportunity to support the evolution of specific, operationalizable ethical AI standards by demanding transparency regarding these “black box” technologies and the processes companies use to develop, assess, and deploy them.