[Air-l] ethics of recording publicly observed interactions

[E. Sean Rintel]

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