[Air-l] (no subject)

Jim Hudson jhudson at cc.gatech.edu
Thu Oct 18 15:23:07 PDT 2001


Here's the information on the about the onlien research ethics mailing list.
Please note that it is an "off the record" list.  This is explained below.

Jim

The original announcement from Amy:

If you're interested in joining the new online-research-ethics mailing
list:

mail: 				majordomo at cc.gatech.edu
place in the message body: 	subscribe online-research-ethics

A quick intro to the issue:
I've been doing some work on trying to development guidelines for ethical
research online.  I'm part of working groups from APA and AoIR to develop
formal policies.  There are lots of thorny issues.  Here's an example of
a controversial situation: studying discourse in chatrooms.

View 1: "A chat room is like a public square"
Linguists reserve the right to record dialog in public places and
study its formal properties. They can take notes or even tape record
conversations say in a park. They don't need consent for this.
Identity of subjects is disguised. Many linguists argue that open
Internet chatrooms are an analogous situation, and they can record
whatever they like and analyze it without acknowledging their
presence.

View 2: "A chat room is like my living room"
Others argue that because chat rooms are normally not recorded, participants
have a reasonable expectation that discourse there is ephemeral. You
can't record it without permission.  You can't make individuals be subjects
in an experimental study without their freely-given informed consent.


Messy, no? Join the mailing list for more. The list is open to anyone.
Especially welcome are:

* Individuals seeking advice on their own research
* Members or IRBs struggling to handle research proposals

The list is "off the record"--you may not quote postings from it without
written permission of the author.  I hope this will help foster free
discussion.

Please feel free to forward this message to interested people, and post
it to appropriate lists.

-- Amy

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Hudson              |  Ph.D. Student
College of Computing    |  jhudson at cc.gatech.edu
Georgia Tech            |  http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~jhudson
Atlanta, GA  30332-0280 |  Phone: 404-894-9761
                        |  Fax:   404-894-0673
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