{"title":"The best ends by the best means: ethical concerns in app reviews","authors":"Neelam Tjikhoeri, Lauren Olson, Emitzá Guzmán","doi":"10.1007/s10664-024-10463-7","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This work analyzes ethical concerns found in users’ app store reviews. We performed this study because ethical concerns in mobile applications (apps) are widespread, pose severe threats to end users and society, and lack systematic analysis and methods for detection and classification. In addition, app store reviews allow practitioners to collect users’ perspectives, crucial for identifying software flaws, from a geographically distributed and large-scale audience. For our analysis, we collected five million user reviews, developed a set of ethical concerns representative of user preferences, and manually labeled a sample of these reviews. We found that (1) users highly report ethical concerns about censorship, identity theft, and safety (2) user reviews with ethical concerns are longer, more popular, and lowly rated, and (3) there is high automation potential for the classification and filtering of these reviews. Our results highlight the relevance of using app store reviews for the systematic consideration of ethical concerns during software evolution.</p>","PeriodicalId":11525,"journal":{"name":"Empirical Software Engineering","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Empirical Software Engineering","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-024-10463-7","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This work analyzes ethical concerns found in users’ app store reviews. We performed this study because ethical concerns in mobile applications (apps) are widespread, pose severe threats to end users and society, and lack systematic analysis and methods for detection and classification. In addition, app store reviews allow practitioners to collect users’ perspectives, crucial for identifying software flaws, from a geographically distributed and large-scale audience. For our analysis, we collected five million user reviews, developed a set of ethical concerns representative of user preferences, and manually labeled a sample of these reviews. We found that (1) users highly report ethical concerns about censorship, identity theft, and safety (2) user reviews with ethical concerns are longer, more popular, and lowly rated, and (3) there is high automation potential for the classification and filtering of these reviews. Our results highlight the relevance of using app store reviews for the systematic consideration of ethical concerns during software evolution.
期刊介绍：
Empirical Software Engineering provides a forum for applied software engineering research with a strong empirical component, and a venue for publishing empirical results relevant to both researchers and practitioners. Empirical studies presented here usually involve the collection and analysis of data and experience that can be used to characterize, evaluate and reveal relationships between software development deliverables, practices, and technologies. Over time, it is expected that such empirical results will form a body of knowledge leading to widely accepted and well-formed theories.
The journal also offers industrial experience reports detailing the application of software technologies - processes, methods, or tools - and their effectiveness in industrial settings.
Empirical Software Engineering promotes the publication of industry-relevant research, to address the significant gap between research and practice.
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