[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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