  The prevalence of social media platforms and their use across the globe makes
them attractive options for studying large groups of people, particularly when
some of these platforms provide access to large amounts of structured data.
However, with the collection, storage, and use of this data comes ethical and
legal responsibilities, which are particularly important when looking at social
groups such as migrants, who are often stigmatised and criminalised. Various
guidelines, frameworks and laws have been developed to ensure social media data
is used in the most ethical way. However, they have quickly evolved within the
past few years and are scattered across various fields and domains. To help
researchers navigate these issues, this chapter provides an overview of the
ethical considerations of studying migration via social media platforms.
Building on relevant academic literature, as well as national and supranational
frameworks and legislations, we review how the main ethical issues related to
social media research have been discussed in the past twenty years and outline
good practice examples to mitigate them. This overview is designed to provide
researchers with theoretical and practical tools to consider and mitigate the
ethical challenges related to social media research in migration-related
contexts.
