[Air-l] ethnography and ethics

RGH rgh at rghoward.com
Sun May 9 18:23:39 PDT 2004


Great discussion all.

Just to chime in again:

I have to agree that universals are not what we need here.  (Per and 
earlier point from Thomas, though, yeah--I am beholden to an IRB in 
the end, if nothing else).

And I don't mean to sound "consequentialist" here either--but, it 
does have a lot to do with if people get hurt.  Some newsgroups and 
some blogs and some chatrooms are a lot like the street:  I see you 
there, I report that.  Its normal.  Some blogs, even, are a bit like 
Hollywood Blvd.  I see you there, and you WANT me to report that. 
However, some places have expectations of privacy. So . . .even if 
you are "covertly" watching people--if it seems "covert" to them, I 
am not sure what justifies that.  I guess, being a weirdo ;) ["Dude . 
. . are you starting at me?"] for the sake of science is one thing if 
you really have some sort of valuable result to come up with. 
(Again, my IRB demands to know what that benefit is no matter how 
"invulnerable" my respondent population is.)  But if you don't, 
again, why be rude?  In all seriousness, admitting you are there is, 
in the case of most social behavior, going to have very little impact.

Unless, again, its a sensitive situation.  Hence, if it is a 
sensitive situation you probably shouldn't be misleading people! 
Rude researchers make it harder for us all to do research.  Which 
isn't' to say I haven't been flamed or I  haven't made mistakes.  It 
happens.  But still--its a judgement call, and doing no harm is 
obviously a good thing to aim for. So, again, I have noticed that 
when I am tempted to be "covert" there is often some very good reason 
why I might be in a position to do some harm.

So, I guess--when you aren't risking much by going "covert" then 
maybe its fine.  But in those cases, I suspect the forum you are 
observing has rather low expectations about privacy; who is gonna 
complain if I publish to the world that they were walking in 
Hollywood?  Or in Paris?  What about Baghdad . . . ? (To gesture to 
the other thread on the list.)

Rob



>Andrea,
>At 19:00 08/05/2004, you wrote:
>
>>I also disagree that posting in a newsgroup is analogous to walking 
>>down the street.
>
>Of course, it is not, even in the age of omnipresent CCTV, it is far 
>more public to post in a newsgroup, then to walk down the street, 
>which is, indeed, semi-private.
>
>Thomas
>
>--
>thomas koenig
>department of social sciences, loughborough university
>http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/staff/thomas/index.html
>
>_______________________________________________
>Air-l mailing list
>Air-l at aoir.org
>http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l


-- 
Robert Glenn Howard
Assistant Professor

Department of Communication Arts      
& Communication Technologies Research Cluster
University of Wisconsin - Madison
rgh at rghoward.com
http://rghoward.com




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