[Air-l] ethnography and ethics

Charles Ess cmess at drury.edu
Sun May 9 14:06:01 PDT 2004


My thanks as well to those who have added their voices to this discussion.
I'm especially delighted with the several replies others have made, in part
because they have made many of the points I would have made. As well, they
demonstrate both a strong concern with and considerable sophistication
regarding ethical reflection as a part of one's work as a researcher - not
as a burdensome obligation imposed by someone(s) from the outside.

> From: ET <et at tarik.com.au>
> Reply-To: air-l at aoir.org
> Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 12:54:58 +0930
> To: air-l at aoir.org
> Subject: Re: [Air-l] ethnography and ethics
> 
> thank you to those who responded and thank you Charles for your long reply.
> I appreciate the fact that you must have taken a fair sized chunk out of
> your day to write your reply.
Most welcome.  As I said, serious questions deserve serious answers.
> 
> To set the scene...
> 1. Yes, I have read the AOIR Ethics document.
> 2. When I make a comment like "results are more important to me than
> process", one should not feel at liberty to assume that I am making such
> a statement with an absence of any respect for human rights. I am well
> versed in what human rights are and have a very strong awareness of the
> issues. My respect for human rights doesnt exist because such rights are
> written in a document,  my respect for them exists within me naturally.
> Any comment on any issue that I make is governed by my own ethics, by my
> own respect for human rights.
I'm delighted you have a natural respect for human rights.  This leaves some
number of humanity, however, who do not seem to come by such respect
naturally. 
Given that, we need some explanation as to why you may have a natural
respect that at least some number of others do not.  But perhaps that's a
discussion for another day.
In any case, as we will see below, understanding and interpreting what
"respect for human rights" means in the context of online research is the
primary question here.

> And I note that whilst it is true that people obsessed with results have
> committed many hideous crimes upon humankind, so too have those obsessed
> with process and simply "doing what they are told".
As Elie Wiesel notes, the good news is that over 6 billion people woke up
today without first thinking of how they could kill their neighbor.  Is this
because they have a "natural" respect for human rights - and/or because they
are "obsessed with process" and generally follow the rules?
I hope the question illustrates three things.  One, the dichotomy between
process and results is overly simple and misleading;
two, it seems unlikely that we will quickly and easily determine which side
of this (false) dilemma has the greater /fewer number of bad actors giving
it a bad name and thus - ostensibly - somehow suggesting the greater /
lesser legitimacy of the other side;
and three, the discussion over human nature (whether primarily good - thus
minimizing the need for rule-making / mixed / or primarily evil, thus
maximizing the need for rule-making and authoritarian regimes) is an
extensive and complex one.

In the name of honesty and openness (important ethical values):
FWIW, I tend to be optimistic about human beings - but what this means is
not the libertarian view emphasizing negative freedom (freedom from all
constraints) but rather a view shared widely in "Western"* philosophical and
religious traditions (Jewish/ early Christian/ Lockean/ Jeffersonian/
Kantian/ Habermasian/ feminist) and consonant with some "Eastern" *views
(Confucian thought; Mencius). On this view, we are free to establish our own
ends/goals (both as individuals and in community) through some form of
reason/intuition - as communicative / shaped by empathic solidarity, etc. -
and thereby through dialogue to determine the means and rules that allow us
to be achieve these ends.
This is called positive freedom - a good example are traffic rules: we are
free-er in our driving presuming that the vast majority of other drivers
will obey the stop signs, drive on the proper side of the road (whichever
that may be), etc. 
Another example would be any athlete or musician who has chosen excellence
in his or her domain.  Such a goal requires a certain amount of regular
practice, perhaps diet, exercise, etc.  Again, one develops greater skill,
agility, ability, etc. - and in this way, one is free-er to act effectively,
dance beautifully, etc. - through adhering to these regimes.

For Libertarians and Hobbesians (for whom the goal of life is to fulfill
individual desire), the stress on negative freedom means that they must see
all rules and practices - even those somehow self-chosen and constructed -
as constraints to be dismissed.
The point here is not only to be be clear about my own approaches - and to
suggest that it is helpful to distinguish between positive and negative
freedom (and the conceptions of human nature they presume) before going too
much further.

[* I use the terms "Western" and "Eastern" in scare quotes because their
received meaning is largely the construction of colonialism and these terms
have all but dissolved as having meaningful references, not only because of
the work of post-colonial studies, but also because the cultural boundaries
they sought to identify have always been blurry at best - a blurriness that
has dramatically increased through the processes of globalization, etc.]
> 
> To reply...
> 
> The problems with setting standards for ethics in online research are many.
> Firstly, ethical people probably dont need a great deal of guidance,
> they may naturally fall within your consensus boundaries most of the
> time, whilst someone hell bent on working outside of  your ethical
> boundaries will do so anyway - and such a person may have no problem
> dishonestly manipulating their processes etc so that they appear to be
> ethical. Its like the tax department tightening a few rules to catch tax
> avoiders. All they usually achieve is making life more difficult for the
> honest whilst the dishonest just find a new way of cheating.(maybe US
> citizens pay their taxes honestly, here tax avoidance is a national pastime)
> I dont believe a set of guidelines will ever prevent unethical
> behaviour, all it does is make some people feel good :-)
I think this rests on a dramatic misunderstanding of the AoIR guidelines in
particular and a common misunderstanding of ethics in general.
More on the AoIR guidelines below.  Let's start with ethics in general.
Part of this may be a matter of gender. Men as a group tend in their ethical
development to see ethics precisely as a matter of rules and principles -
i.e., as a kind of algorithm that allows for deductively determining "the
right answer" in the face of conflicting choices.   (This further leaves us
(since men as a group tend to think dualistically at least in the early
decades of their lives) with the choice to either conform or rebel.)
This choice would be reinforced, of course, if one also held to a negative
conception of freedom (rather than understanding positive freedom and the
role of rules (as self-chosen) to help make us freer).
As that development continues, however (Kohlberg, Gilligan, and Perry are
the standard references here), both men and women move to more complex
stages of development ("post-conventional") that engage the traditions I
mentioned above (e.g., Kant and feminism), in which freedom is understood
more as positive freedom and the rules/guidelines we dialogically construct
in community serve as the means to make us free-er, not less so.

Perhaps I read poorly here - but you seem to be reading the AoIR guidelines
as equivalent to tax laws which indeed present rules imposed from the
outside, and an either/or choice of conformity or punishment.  While the
latter might well be perfect models of conventional morality, rules imposed
from the outside, and negative freedom as the basis for the apparent choice
to conform or be punished -
I would argue (and indeed, I thought the opening pages of the AoIR
guidelines made this clear) that the AoIR guidelines seek to exemplify a
more post-conventional dialogical / feminist approach to ethics.
This is suggested in part by our citing Simone de Beauvoir's _Ethics of
Ambiguity_: "Ethics does not furnish recipes any more than do science and
art.  One can merely propose methods."

Moreover, whatever your concerns with the tax authorities -
the AoIR guidelines (a) were developed by consensus among AoIR members, and
with considerable work in reviewing the pertinent literature on various
ethical concerns regarding online research
- and always with a view towards developing guidelines (NOT "law" and not
even the sorts of ethical codes binding members of various professions,
e.g., in psychology, etc.).
The guidelines are offered as potentially useful for researchers and
institutional authorities who may be having trouble thinking through the
details of a particular dilemma.  They ask questions and suggest a range of
legitimate answers.
While they have been approved by AoIR - they are open to constant revision
(a major update of the bibliography is in the offing): indeed, people who
read this list regularly will note that I rather regularly ask for new
cases, suggestions, criticisms, etc.
Finally, a number of researchers, both younger and more senior, have kindly
written to indicate ways in which they have been useful.
In short, it is not our goal to tighten the screws on anyone's behavior per
se.  So your comparison between the AoIR guidelines and the tax authorities
misses, unfortunately, a number of crucial points.

I'm genuinely sorry you didn't seem to get this.  We tried to spell this out
as carefully as we could.  If you have suggestions for how we can make this
consensus-oriented, open-to-revision character of the guidelines clear, they
would be welcome.
By the same token, if you do not find them useful - it would be even more
helpful to know the specifics of a case you're dealing with, why it eludes
the guidelines, and what suggestions you would offer (ideally, with some
sort of rationale) for both your response to the problem the case presented
and why how others might find this response useful.

> 
> Secondly, looking at the AOIR document as an example, whilst it tries to
> be a guideline does it really change anything?
> Does it really address all areas adequately or even consistently?
> If I want to observe a usenet newsgroup are the AOIR guidelines
> adequate? And are the guidelines for usenet research tactics beyond
> controversy?
> Do the restrictions contained in the guidelines make sense to everyone
> for all circumstances and are they beyond argument?
I hope by now it's clear, in light of our dialogical / feminist approach,
that these are all excellent questions, i.e., questions we ask ourselves
regularly - and hope that AoIRists will help us with.
In that spirit: we would appreciate suggestions and responses, preferably
based on experience with a specific research design and related set of
ethical concerns.
(BTW: loading up a generic set of questions in this way, while intended, I'm
sure, in good faith, runs the risk of being interpreted as rhetorical
dirtballing.  That is: if a question is merely rhetorical - suggesting, in
particular, that there is no good answer to the question - then piling up a
stack of them is compared to collecting a bunch of dirtballs and hurling
them at one's interlocutor, with destructive rather than constructive
intent.)
> And as another list member pointed out - arguments or justifications
> about importance of a project are all matters of personal opinion.
Um, please go back and look at my previous post - this is ethical
relativism, and I thought I had explained rather clearly why this view is
both ethically dangerous and logically self-refuting.
In particular, you really believed this - it would make no logical sense for
you to be concerned in the least what I or anyone else thought about your
views.  Nor it would it make sense for you to make any effort to defend
them.
> 
> Thirdly, I also wonder why AOIR members place such a high standard
> against intrusion into peoples lives when our society has significantly
> lower standards.
This begs the question.  As several of us have noted, the guidelines
concerning privacy, confidentiality, etc., are based in good measure on the
empirical experiences  of many researchers - i.e., of pissing off their
subjects when they (the researchers) fail to meet the subjects'
expectations.
Even if the situation is different in your society - there are strong
arguments that because professionals, including academics, exercise greater
influence in society, they have a greater obligation to behave at higher
ethical standards than the average.

> Everyday we see on our TV screens and in the paper, and in online news
> services, intrusive photos of people and intrusive or revealing
> information about them. Our society allows people to be identified when
> only alleged to have committed a crime with no regard for how destroyed
> their lives might be if found not guilty.
> Cameras are poked into faces at times of grief, hardship etc with no
> consideration at all for the individual.
> Walk down the street and you can photographed and your picture published
> in the paper without your consent.
> Why is it that when you deliberately post in an unsecure and non private
> forum on the internet you should enjoy perfect anonymity and privacy
> when we live in a society that does not have the same standard?
> What privacy did Mrs Beckham enjoy when allegations about her husbands
> behaviour started to surface?
> Was anyones identity protected?
There are at least two problems here.
The very fact that we see these as intrusions suggests there's indeed
something ethically wrong - though in the case of public persons,
expectations of privacy are understood to be diminished (this is encoded in
law in several countries).
Moreover, to argue from what _is_ the case (these examples, so far as their
true and not exaggerations, etc.) to what _ought_ to be the case is the
naturalistic fallacy.  Just because some men abuse women does not mean any
male _ought_ to.  Au contraire - the existence of ethically unacceptable
behavior can work easily as well as an argument for means to undermine such
behavior, not make it the ethical norm.

> ................................................
> I read a case study yesterday, by a commercial research company. They
> observed both a usenet group and a moderated Yahoo forum.
> They reasoned that since there was no moderator on the usenet forum they
> did not need to seek permission - and I imagine there would be many who
> would feel sympathetic to this view. They also argued that they did not
> believe copyright was an issue for information on the usenet forum - I
> imagine they would get a strong argument from many on this approach.
> They did reason that they needed to ask permission from the moderators
> of the Yahoo forum to enter the forum. Yet even this raises ethical
> issues in my mind.
> How can the moderators speak on behalf of all the members, and how can
> the moderators hand over the copyright ownership of individual posts?
> The other interesting issue in this instance was the fact that both
> forums had archived posts going back to the mid and early 90's. This was
> an attraction to the researchers. They happily went about using the
> archived posts in their research.
> But from an ethical viewpoint, isnt this also a problem? If its
> necessary to ask for permission of members of a forum today to be able
> to view their posts, shouldnt it also be ethical to ask permission from
> those who posted in the past? And this is probably impossible since many
> earlier members may have disappeared into thin air.
Nice question -
to my knowledge, ethics boards will allow for exceptions to informed consent
if (a) gathering such consent is excessively burdensome, costly, etc.,
and/or (b) such consent would dramatically undermine the central research
goals (though in this case, subjects deserve full disclosure after the
research is completed), AND
(c) if risk to subjects is minimal.
These seem to be reasonable answers to your questions - so I don't see these
questions as fatal objections to the project of determining ethically
justified / legitimate responses to these sorts of issues.
> There was one other very interesting ethical question raised by the
> study. The researchers observed that there were a few very regular
> posters. They asked a few of them if they could reproduce the posting
> exchanges in their study. The posters agreed, although one poster, who
> was famous for his contributions, requested that his identity NOT be
> concealed. It appears that the researchers agreed to this condition but
> later changed their minds.Isnt this unethical?
That would depend on the rationale the researchers offered for their change
of view - if they said "we just felt like it," I doubt anyone would find
that persuasive or justified.
And if the researchers _did_ do something that many of us would recognize is
unethical - 
surely you don't want to argue that because others have behaved unethically,
that you  are free to do so as well (two wrongs make a right)?


> Ethics appears to be a movable beast.
It is a complex and sophisticated beast - but it is mistaken to think the
efforts to resolve ethical issues will always end in futility and
relativism.  In my experience, such conclusions follow only if people don't
try very hard and if they are not well informed of the ethical traditions
that have developed both locally and globally over the past few millennia
(if not longer).
Indeed, one of the great experiences of working with the AoIR ethics
committee was seeing just how far we got from an initial morass of problems,
approaches, conflicting views, etc., towards fairly clear (and apparently
helpful) consensus on important guidelines and values.
But you don't get there if you don't try.

> 
> The problem with ethical "rules" is that in an area such as research of
> a usenet forum, even though you might have general consensus on some
> issues, you are also likely to have quite significant disagreement over
> others. One might agree with everything in your AOIR guidelines but
> passionately disagree over  how to access usenet forums. Should one then
> feel compelled to tow the "party line" over usenet forums, or is one at
> risk of being branded "unethical" merely because one disagrees in one
> area of endeavour.
Again you seem to be thinking in either/or terms.
In general, my response to this sort of situation is - much depends on the
specific examples, details, and rationale you might have in mind - so the
first order of business would be for you to explain in greater detail just
what it is you want to do, and then why, should it be the case, that any
violations of informed consent, rights to privacy, anonymity,
confidentiality, etc., might be justified.  As noted above - there are
middle grounds here, and you may well have discerned and developed one -
one, moreover, that would be of use and interest to the rest of us.
More broadly: sheer disagreement can mean many things - including the
possibility, however loath one might be to admit it, that someone has
reasoned poorly and/or is simply wrong.  It may also mean that someone
interprets an agreed-upon value or rule in a way different from someone else
- and perhaps for good reason, depending on the circumstances of the
application of that value or rule.
Still more broadly: scientists disagree on important issues.  Social
scientists disagree on important issues.  Yet we seem to think that some
truth claims in these domains hold up better than others - even as they
remain open to critique and revision. By the same token, the fact that
individuals disagree on ethical issues doesn't imply that everyone is wrong
and/or that the efforts to discern important truths and values must thus be
futile.  As in these other human enterprises, we can take such disagreement
to mean we have more work to do, not that the enterprise is intrinsically
flawed.

> .......................................................................
> Let me conclude by exploring the area of human rights - an area you
> brought up, Charles,  in your reply.
> 
> At the ultimate level in scoiety I am bound by everyone elses universal
> human rights and my need to respect the inalienable rights of others.
> At the secondary level I am bound by the laws and standards that the
> society I live in maintains.
> Do I really need another set of rules telling me what I can and cant do
> in matters of research when I am already bound by the rules above?
> Do I need "ethical" guidelines to tell me how to deal with the privacy
> of others when there are already laws in place to deal with this issue?
There's some inadvertent but still fallacious question-begging here.
One of the basic impulses behind the development of the AoIR ethics working
committee was the recognition that extant laws and ethical codes did _not_
obviously apply to online behavior and research.  In particular, if an
online behavior is merely the expression of a virtual identity radically
divorced from the body sitting back at the terminal (a widely held, perhaps
even dominant view in the 1990s), then laws and codes concerned with
embodied human beings were by definition irrelevant.
Given this - contested and currently less-than-widely-held - view, laws and
codes written for embodied human beings _should_ hold in some fashion for
online behavior and research -
(but, with the exception of the European Union's Data Privacy Protection Act
and its applications in the E.U.),
contrary to your assumption here, no one had begun to make clear just how
the laws and codes designed for the offline world could be meaningfully
applied to online worlds.
At the same time, many researchers in the 1990s had the unhappy experience
of finding their IRBs in the U.S. or equivalent authorities in other nations
attempting to apply extant codes and laws to the online contexts researchers
were interested in - but, because the IRB or equivalent members were less
informed regarding the realities of online environments and technologies,
they sometimes did so in ways that were more restrictive than necessary.
That is - when others outside the research community attempted to interpret
how extant laws and codes should apply to online research - they did so in
ways that researchers (and at least a few of us philosophers) agreed were
not as fully informed and carefully thought through as might be desirable.

In short, the extant laws and codes were not sufficient - and their
application to online research by some institutional authorities, several
researchers discovered, were more restrictive than might need to be the
case.
Hence the AoIR process.
So - yes, researchers apparently _do_ need ethical guidelines of the sort
we've attempted to develop, because applying extant codes and laws to online
venues and contexts has largely not  been done, and how these are to apply
to online venues and contexts requires considerable work by researchers and
philosophers well-informed of the distinctive contexts and ethical
backgrounds and traditions that intersect in online research.

Again, there is nothing compulsory about the AoIR guidelines.  If you don't
want to use them for whatever reason, nothing requires you to do so.
But our experience so far is that when researchers use these - along with,
in some cases, conversation and correspondence with members of the committee
- they are better equipped to explain to their oversight authorities why
their research designs are ethically acceptable.

> 
> And, in imposing guidelines upon the researcher, arent you reducing
> their enjoyment of their own human rights?
This is specious - (a) how are we "imposing" guidelines on anyone?
(b) the only logical conclusion I can draw from this question is that such
researchers must have some sort of human right to violate other human beings
of their rights.  Because if the guidelines seek to clarify and enforce
those rights - what "rights" of the researcher would they reduce, if not
some putative right to violate others' rights?
> As I said above, the society that we live in has lesser standards than
> your guidelines - and it is a basic human right for one to enjoy the
> same rights as others in society.
This is again specious.  Your examples of public persons doesn't logically
or ethically map onto researchers' behaviors, as noted above (and by others
responding to your first post).
> Why should an internet researcher enjoy lesser rights than a journalist,
> for example?
This begs the question: it seems to assume that there is a _right_ to invade
others' privacy - or at least to ignore it.  Is this your argument?
And as others have pointed out - researchers and journalists are apples and
oranges.
> If the owner of a TV station is free to put a photo of me on the news
> and identify me, why shouldnt I be free to capture a public moment in
> time in a newsgroup and identify the words or actions of others?
> I am not expecting the right to invade their privacy by entering a
> private room, but I am expecting the right to discuss freely and openly
> that which people have put on  the public record. To me, posting in a
> newsgroup is like walking down the street - you do so knowing everyone
> can see you.
Others have responded nicely to this last set of questions - making the
point, in logical terms, that these are questionable analogies.
I would add to their comments a point taken up in the AoIR guidelines.
Especially for the tradition of deontological ethics, person's
_expectations_ hold paramount value - even if those expectations are
misplaced or unrealistic.
It turns out, in fact, that in countries such as Norway and Germany (as I've
been informed) - i.e., countries shaped by a strong deontological tradition
- you can't record behavior in public without persons' permission.
That may not be the law in Australia.  But a researcher who set high value
on people's expectations would be hesitant about recording, much less
publishing, comments made in a newsgroup without permission - unless there
were some sort of posting or other strong indication saying, in effect, "all
of us who participate in this discussion know full well that these comments
are public and thus researchers are not bound by codes of informed consent
and protection of privacy to notify us that they are recording and using
these comments."
Of course, at that point, you face the other dilemma: at least in U.S. law -
and, so far as I've been able to determine, in countries signatory to the
Berne Convention - anything appearing on the web as publicly accessible is
automatically copyright by the author(s).

Whew!  
I hope you understand that these responses indicate the seriousness with
with I take your comments and questions.  I also hope these responses are
somewhat helpful - both to us in our discussion, and to other interested
readers on the AoIR list.

Cheers and all best wishes,

Charles Ess 
Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies
Drury University
900 N. Benton Ave.                   Voice: 417-873-7230
Springfield, MO  65802  USA            FAX: 417-873-7435
Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/
"Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.  Persons appear by
entering into relation to other persons." -- Martin Buber, _I and Thou_





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