[Air-l] ethics of recording publicly observed interactions
E. Sean Rintel
er8430 at albany.edu
Tue May 11 10:32:43 PDT 2004
G'day all,
Some replies to points about the privacy of recording online interation:
A) To follow up Jennifer Stromer-Galley's point about cell-phones not
being public for the participants, which was in reply to arguments about
"if it's loud enough for me to hear it then it's public", I am surprised
that no-one has discussed--on the pro or con side of those arguments
above--the fact that the cell phone is clearly *changing* what "public"
and "private" mean. To claim that there is a set "public" and a
"private" excludes both how the technological affordances and
constraints of any given meaning allow for specialized and
in-the-moment-enacted practices of "publicness" and "privateness". This
is an extension to Baym's argument, in that not only do 'different media
have particular purblic/private configurations and users' but also that
we, as individuals and societies, are constantly in the process of
negotiating our public/private notions even as we enact them one
interaction at a time.
B) I disagree that chatrooms, newsgroups etc. are similar to the
panopticon in particular.
1) In terms of visibility: While some people may lurk without
participating, or even being seen (like the guards in a panopticon),
most people who are active can see each other.
2) In terms of power: A chatroom etc. is not carceral. Those who
participate are not prisoners held without their consent for
crimes--they are free-willed subjects who can come and go as they
please. Those who watch are not guards intended to observe
prisoners--they are either other participants or lurkers.
But that is not to disagree entirely with the point. As Goffman would
argue, we are all, at all times, regulated and self-regulating in terms
of how we understand others to perceive our public performance--even
when we are the only person around. But as Baym (and I think JSG)
argues, people's awareness of the extent of public/private visibility in
internet media are very different, and that matters as to how we, as
researchers, can formulate a plan of data-collection and dissemination.
It also matters to the IRBs who have to make decisions about protecting
human subjects.
Until anon
Sean
--
E. Sean Rintel
Department of Communication
University at Albany, State University of New York
http://www.albany.edu/~er8430
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