[Air-l] internet research and confidentiality

[Thomas Koenig]

At 16:39 21/12/2004, you wrote:
>At 10:18 AM 12/21/2004, you 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.
>
>Almost ALL of us have encountered this situation, Oriana. It is made all 
>the more difficult by the fact that, even if you devise pseudonyms to 
>protect your subjects, a simple Google search will turn up the original 
>blog and the identity will be revealed. As you work through this struggle 
>with your IRB, I strongly suggest that you consult the AoIR ethics 
>guidelines, which may be found at
>http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf
>There are no simple solutions here, just difficult decisions that you (and 
>your IRB) must make.


We had this issue a while ago on this list, and I just want to repeat my view:

Blogging, Webpublishing and Usenet posting are demonstrably public 
activities. Unless you render the concept of "private" so ambigious that it 
becomes virtually unusable, this is an empirical fact, not a normative 
statement.

Therefore, publishing research on these kinds of communications does not 
violate any privacy/confidentialty laws. At least that is the case for most 
countries that guarantee some freedom of speech rights.

While I have no idea about the bylaws of specific universities or 
professional associations, I would strongly caution against regulations 
that curtail the rights of academics vis-a-vis non-affiliated citizens or 
even journalists.

Of course, some exceptions with respect to vulnerable persons apply, but by 
and large vulnerable persons do not do blogging.

BTW, you are not doing (experimental) research on human subjects, but on 
communications.

Thomas




-- 
thomas koenig, ph.d.
department of social sciences, loughborough university
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/staff/thomas/index.html