User Perceptions of Ethical Issues in Software

Software is ubiquitous, and emerging software applications quickly become part of everyday life. Despite its many positive contributions, software is often perceived negatively, for example when users worry about software-mediated surveillance, discrimination and manipulation. Software users regularly share their perspectives on ethical issues, discussing it online with diverse communities. There are still gaps in research about the full breadth of perceived issues, their relations and the causes for why something is seen as an issue. This can lead to ignorance toward or misunderstandings of minority groups. Our goal is to fill these gaps and understand the distinct contexts of communities that hold them. Specifically, we will (1) structure the context that describes ethical issues in a knowledge graph, (2) deduce user's stances towards them, (3)analyze how these perspectives change over time and (4) learn where to anticipate ethical issues. Our work is meant to support software evolution by explaining different sides of ethical issues found in software.