Article writing homework help. Professor Task Requirements:
The final project asks you to do an in-depth study of the ethical practices of an institution, organization, profession, business, or other entity that uses information technology to do one or more of the following things: collect, organize, store, analyze, use, and disseminate data/information. The focus should be on the ethical dimensions of these practices—including issues such as data privacy, intellectual property, information security, equitable access to information, information reliability, fair and just data usage, etc.
 
Research for the project will include both scholarly background research on ethical information practices for the organization and specific research on the institution’s practices. As part of the discovery of the institution’s practices, you will conduct an interview with at least one person from the organization.
 
Based on the information found in the discovery phase of the project, you will carry out an ethical analysis of the organization’s information practices. Using the ethical theories and concepts discussed in the course, you will evaluate these practices from an ethical viewpoint. Based on this evaluation, you will make at least one concrete proposal for how the institution can improve its ethics.
 
About 1500 words. (Only use reference from Google Scholar that are dated less than ten years back)
My Proposal:
Evaluative Lexicon is a company founded by Matt Rocklage and Russ Fazio. The way that people words have the ability to signal different levels of emotionality, valence, and extremity. Based on this observation, they created the Evaluative Lexicon (EL): a computational linguistic tool that measures these facets of people’s opinions, with a special focus on emotionality. I will focus on the way EL measures these facets of opinion through transcribed audio. I want to discuss ethical issues regarding to how to obtain those transcribed audio and is this fair to generalize everyone’s emotion, valance, extremity just based on how they use certain words.
 
My interview:
 

  1. How does Evaluative Lexicon(EL) collect data to do research or develop its products?

 
We constructed and validated the EL using 15 million online reviews, 1 million tweets, and 10,000 movie and TV scripts. For example, we used Amazon reviews to assess how well our tool measures consumers’ positivity and emotionality across different product categories. These are publicly available data, but we also collect data from participants who choose to take part in our studies (see below for more).
 

  1. Does EL transcript from audio data to textual data to use for R&D or EL use the audio data directly?

 
The EL analyzes text and so it would require the audio to be transcribed to written text.
 

  1. If EL transcript from audio data to textual data, what kind of tool do you use to do that? There has been researches showing that automated transcription tools are not enough for audio data. Do you have any thoughts on that?

 
I’m not familiar with automated transcription tools.
 

  1. Does EL have a privacy policy regarding EL’s employees’ data or the data that the company is using for R&D purposes?

 
In line with Institutional Review Board (IRB) standards across different institutions I’ve been at (e.g., Northeastern, Northwestern, UMass), all data we use for R&D are password protected on locked computers. Moreover, most data we use are publicly available as well (e.g., Amazon.com reviews). We don’t collect data on employees.
 

  1. If the company collects its own data, does Evaluative Lexicon inform people that EL is collecting their data? Can you share some details about the consent form if there is one?

 
Yes, all participants in our studies using the EL are either aware they are participating in a study or they have posted the data publicly already (e.g., Amazon.com reviews). For the studies where we collect the data ourselves, the consent forms inform participants that their responses will be anonymized and stored safely on locked, password-protected computers.
 

  1. If the company is buying data from another company, is EL aware of how that company obtain those data? Does EL happen to know what is that company’s privacy policy?

 
We don’t purchase data from other companies.
 

  1. If at any point, you, as a founder of the company, think that either your company or the company that you are buying data from is collecting data in an unethical way, will you raise your concern over the matter?

 
Absolutely. I would not accept data that violated my personal ethical standards or IRB standards.
 

  1. What is your opinion on the overall privacy policy of the technology industry in general?

 
Generally, tech companies do a poor job with privacy because they haven’t been forced to address it. Whether consumers realize it or not, most consumers freely provide private information as a tradeoff for ease-of-use. For example, Google uses your search information and location data to help you find information you’re looking for. Many consumers find this very helpful and so they are willing to give up private information to corporations. I think more consumers are realizing there is a tradeoff between privacy and ease-of-use and are re-assessing their options, but it seems like they’re still comfortable giving up private information. It may be that most people simply don’t realize all the data they’re providing.
 

  1. With recent privacy scandal regarding customers’ data, do you think that there should be stricter law regarding protecting customers’ data?

 
Yes. There should be stricter privacy laws regardless of whether or not there have been scandals. Companies need to be held accountable for the data they collect and how they’re using that data.
 

  1. With your knowledge of the law, do you think that there is enough law or guidelines of how companies should store and use customers’ data?

 
(See above)
 

  1. There has been researches showing that if people know that they are being listening to, they will change the way they talk and react to certain words. Do you any thoughts on that or any solutions to that problem?

 
To be honest, technology is so prevalent in society and becoming more-and-more invisible because of its everyday use that I’m not sure people will even notice. This is why creating laws and holding companies accountable is even more important as time goes on.
 

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