[Air-l] ethics of recording publicly observed interactions

Nancy Baym nbaym at ku.edu
Wed May 12 07:09:17 PDT 2004


In response to Danah's thoughtful post:

Some years ago (1995 perhaps?), I was subscribed to an academic 
mailing list. The question of whether quotes could be pulled from 
posts and cited in publications in the same way that those writers' 
publications would be was raised. The people on that list got 
EXTREMELY upset at the idea that their words could be used this way 
and decided that they would institute a norm that such use of their 
words was disallowed. I pointed out that this was fine if they wanted 
to reach that agreement amongst themselves, but that the list was 
archived and searchable and that it was quite possible that someone 
might search for, say, "Sachs" and "adjacency pair," and that a post 
would come up written by an important person in the field that they 
found useful. This user would not see the discussion about the ethics 
of such quotation, and if said user went to MLA or APA or other style 
books, would find no implication that there was any reason not to 
quote that material (instead would find guidelines on how to do it). 
I thought I was performing a public service by helping them 
understand the public nature of their activity.

Instead of people responding by saying "wow, I didn't realize how 
public this discussion was," I was vehemently and personally attacked 
for what they saw as a phenomenal display of professional disrespect 
and lack of ethics on my part (note that this was despite my 
disclaimer that I would respect their desire not to be quoted, but 
that I was seeking to let them know how others could come to quote 
them without realizing it could be problematic). These were extremely 
smart people. I was floored by their response. Shoot the messenger!

Yes, ET, it IS public in the sense that anyone can get at it. Yet 
people might get hurt or REALLY mad at you for using their words. 
It's in trying to reconsile these contradictions that the question of 
ethics arises. If it doesn't bother a researcher to alienate and 
perhaps cause emotional hurt to their subjects, then there is no 
ethical problem for that researcher. If a researcher is concerned for 
the well being of those he or she studies, then these issues need to 
be thought through. There isn't a right answer.

I have had the posts I've written to this list (on this very issue) 
used in classroom discussions before. I've taken posts from this list 
into class for discussion. I assume the possiblity when I post (even 
if my spell-check is not always successful!), but I bet Danah is 
right that most of us don't.

Nancy


-- 
Nancy Baym 	http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym
Communication Studies, University of Kansas
Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 102, Lawrence, KS 66045-7574, USA
Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org




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