[Air-l] internet research and confidentiality

Mark D. Johns johnsmar at luther.edu
Wed Dec 22 07:12:38 PST 2004


At 04:03 PM 12/21/2004, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>If, under such circumstances, sociologists have any doubt whatsoever about 
>the need for informed consent, they consult with institutional review 
>boards or, in the absence of such boards, with another authoritative body 
>with expertise on the ethics of research before proceeding with such research.

The ASA guidelines you quote are actually very consistent with the AoIR 
guidelines. In the portion excerpted above, they indicate that there may be 
ambiguous situations that require careful thought and negotiation with the 
IRB. Beyond this quote, the ASA guidelines go on to be more restrictive 
about the study of populations at risk. Your focus on only the first 
sentence, permitting study in public, is a highly selective reading of what 
you have quoted. They do not imply that one can go do whatever one wants in 
research.

As others have pointed out here, blogs are not all the same and there are 
various circumstances in which a blog -- or other internet site --may not 
be entirely "public." Because the original post on this question did not 
detail the circumstances, it is simply irresponsible to tell the person, 
"hey, go ahead, it's all public," without knowing all of the facts. It may 
be the case that the material is public, it may not be.

I'm on vacation and frankly am not looking for a fight on this. Personally, 
I don't disagree with you that much of what is available on the 'net is 
public and fair game for study, and I do that kind of work myself. I don't 
know your research and am not trying to criticize it. But I would never 
recommend that another researcher simply do what I have done without 
knowing to what degree the situation is the same. To do so assumes that 
"one size fits all."

>I do not think that I advocate a "one size fits all" approach. But I do 
>want to have a law that allows in principle for quotation of blogs and the 
>like, and then specifies some narrow exemptions to that rule. Just like 
>the ASA guidelines do.

Yeah, and I want Santa to bring me a new Porsche for Christmas. But I don't 
have a lot of control over that. And (aside from the fact that the ASA and 
AoIR guidelines are essentially saying the same thing) we as researchers 
don't simply get to wish for the rules by which we conduct research -- we 
have to live with the rules governments and institutions lay out for us. 
The guidelines, once again, are not "a law," but are there, as are the ASA 
and other disciplinary guidelines, to help us not run afoul of those 
governmental and institutional rules.

------
Mark D. Johns, Ph.D.
Asst. Professor of Communication/Linguistics,
Luther College, Decorah, Iowa
http://faculty.luther.edu/~johnsmar/
-----------------------------------------------
"Get the facts first. You can distort them later."
     ---Mark Twain  




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