What Counts as “People” in Digital Social Research? Subject Rethinking and Its Ethical Consequences

Francesca Romana Lenzi (), Angela Delli Paoli and Maria Carmela Catone ()
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Francesca Romana Lenzi: Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome “Foro Italico”, 00135 Rome, Italy
Angela Delli Paoli: Department of Humanities, Philosophy and Education, University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, Italy
Maria Carmela Catone: Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, Italy

Societies, 2025, vol. 15, issue 12, 1-18

Abstract: This article examines how digitalization reshapes the research subject in social inquiry. We ask, “What counts as a research subject in digital social research, and how do we ethically account for people represented through data, traces, and algorithmic profiles?” We argue that data are inseparable from the people who produce and are affected by them and describe a three-pronged separation—between data and persons, persons and bodies, and researchers and persons—that risks dehumanization. Drawing on examples of native and digitized data and on voluntary, unintentional, and infrastructural traces, we map key harms, including privacy breaches, dataveillance, manipulation, and discrimination. We then revisit core ethical principles—consent, anonymity, and confidentiality—considering open science and platform-mediated environments, and highlight the role of algorithmic awareness. The paper offers a conceptual reframing of the “subject” in digital social research and provides a set of practical implications for responsible practices. We conclude with recommendations to re-humanize data through relational ethics, transparent methods, and participant education.

Keywords: digital social research; datafication; research ethics; human-data relations; epistemology of digital methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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