[Air-L] public/private

[Alex Halavais]

OK,

Similar hypothetical: A group of people engage in a fetish festival on
a public street. Pretty racy and revealing stuff going on. As a
researcher, I take pictures and observe the interactions and include
them in a best seller called "Weird fetishists and the weird fetishes
they engage in weirdly." Years later, this gets back to the
participants, and they are tres embarrassed.

Have I violated... anything? Certainly not anything legally. I can
take pictures of a public festival on public property. Have I invaded
their privacy? No. They might not have *expected* to encounter their
conservative mother-in-law at the festival, but they knew it was a
public happening, and anyone could drop by. If they were concerned
about people knowing they had an "unnatural" affinity to balloons and
Scotch tape, they would either (a) wear a mask, or (b) do it behind
closed doors--both of which are options online as well.

Of course, people often would rather their prior public acts could be
covered up. But human subject protection is not absolute! Mitigating
the harm (e.g., by asking everyone in the festival for their
permission to be studied) in many cases is just an unreasonable burden
for studying public behavior. The benefit of understanding
society--our work has worth--is more important.

Alex



On 8/11/07, Ed Lamoureux <ell at bumail.bradley.edu> wrote:
>
> Ok
> So you are studying "abnormal sexual proclivities in everyday
> American life."
> You find a REAL juicy blog . . . in which person X writes some pretty
> darned racy stuff for the entire world to see (if they want) ... but
> normally, really, only their friends go there.... (but you are right,
> anyone could).
>
> Down the road, you publish the piece in an online journal. That item
> is SO important to your argument that you publish a nice long quote
> from the data.
>
> Some readers come along, google the string, and get led back to your
> subject and write to them, wondering why they are SO damned abnormal,
> sexually speaking.
>
> Now . . . I would say that the subject has not been protected. I
> would say that without their permission, you've exposed their
> character to personal damage. You've not only used their material
> without permission and used their material as data for a study,
> you've also labeled them as abnormal AND drawn people's attention to
> them as such . . . WITH your university-researcher's authority as an
> expert, without so much as asking them if they understand what you
> are up to or it it's ok to use their material.
>
> Gee... I kinda think that's the sort of thing that human subject
> protection is supposed to stop, isn't it?
>
>
> Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D.
> Associate Professor, Multimedia Program
> and Department of Communication
> Co-Director, New Media Center
> 1501 W. Bradley
> Bradley University
> Peoria IL  61625
> 309-677-2378
> <http://slane.bradley.edu/com/faculty/lamoureux/website2/index.html>
> <http://gcc.bradley.edu/mm/>
> AIM/IM & skype: dredleelam
> Second Life: Professor Beliveau
>
>
>
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