[Air-l] internet research and confidentiality

Lilia Efimova mathemagenic at gmail.com
Wed Dec 22 00:20:11 PST 2004


Ogatta,

a series of questions/answers/discussion overview on weblog research
ethics (my own research + practices of other weblog researchers):

http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/04/27.html#a1188
http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/04/29.html#a1191
http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/05/16.html#a1209

Once you are there you may want to check comments and "links from
other blogs" for these posts.

So far my choices are the following:

- I do not ask permissions prior to the study (but I study my own
blogging community and I blog about it, so most of bloggers I study
know it :)

- I usually ask permissions for using real names, quotes from weblogs
and providing permalinks if I treat weblog content as a data (= to say
something about individuals, their relations or interactions). I do
not do it when referring to a weblog post as a reference. Of course,
there is a grey area in between...

One of important reasons to ask for a permission to link to/quote
someone's weblog is not the privacy as such (as weblogs are public
anyway), but exposing a blogger to a potentially wider audience than
it would be without "research spotlight". It could be a case that
particular blogger doesn't like such publicity and I'd respect this
choice.

And, as a side note, I'm working on a document outlining weblog
research challenges (ethics is one of them), drop me a line in private
if you think that reading draft version could be helpful in your
research.

Lilia Efimova
blog.mathemagenic.com


On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 11:18:58 -0500, Oriana Solta Gatta
<ogatta1 at student.gsu.edu> wrote:
> Hello,
> I am now in the middle of filling out an IRB form for research that I intend to do on blogging practices, and it seems that any research done on "human subjects" must keep personally identifying information confidential.  This is a difficult issue, since one's username and blog title would identify an individual, but they may also be understood as published/public information.  If anyone has encountered a similar situation and can advise as to how I should proceed or who can offer research references that deal with this issue, that would be much appreciated.
> Take care,
> Oriana Gatta
> Women's Studies M.A. candidate
> Georgia State University
> 
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