[Air-L] research ethics world wide? (was Re: NYT story on academic facebook research)

[Ulf-Dietrich Reips]

Hi Peter, Charles,
it seems one crucial issue is whether the law system has both privacy 
laws and laws governing the protection of research, and how these 
relate to each other - generally and in court decisions.
Best --u

At 9:32 Uhr +0100 17.12.2007, Charles Ess wrote:
>  > Now my question for cross border scholars are the research ethics
>>  much different based on the privacy laws in Canada, the USA, Europe
>>  or Asia?
>yes! 
>>
>>  Of course I am more interested in privacy law differences than the
>>  actual ethics. But I am curious if there is an effect from the laws
>>  on the ethics?
>yes!
>
>A starting point, actually, is the AoIR ethical guidelines for Internet
>research (2002 - from the website) which, among other things, paid careful
>attention to the relationship between diverse cultural expectations re.
>privacy, data privacy protection laws, and research ethics.
>
>Roughly, the E.U. has the most stringent data privacy protection laws - but,
>until recently at least, nothing like the U.S. IRBs.  Research ethics, at
>the risk of a wildly wholesale and overgeneralized statement, at least in
>the northern countries, are learned and enforced more informally than
>formally.  (Especially in Germany and Scandinavia, there is a prevailing
>trust that people will do the right thing - and if they don't, the error can
>be corrected more effectively through informal rather than formal channels.)
>
>In Japan, China and Thailand, there is a nascent attention to Internet
>research ethics - but shaded, as one might expect, by very different
>traditions regarding the understanding of "privacy" (generally more negative
>than in a West shaped by modernity and industrialization since the 1700s,
>and, when positive, more collective-familiar than individual).
>Comparatively limited data privacy protections exist - but the situation is
>changing, in part as cultures, and thereby values/assumptions/beliefs re.
>privacy, etc. hybridize (in part through the influence of our beloved
>Internet ...)
>
>Clearly, all of this is work very much in progress.  We heard from scholars
>and researchers from around the globe at this year's AoIR panel on research
>ethics, chaired by Elizabeth Buchanan (the chair of the AoIR ethics working
>group).  Notes from that session should be online soon - and I would look
>for more to come from the forthcoming _International Journal on Information
>Research Ethics_ (the first issue will be online soon).
>Interestingly, a highlight for me was to learn from our European colleagues
>that U.S.-like IRBs were becoming more and more the norm for them as well.
>
>In the meantime, the best single article I know of recently on
>cross-cultural comparisons of this sort is Dan Burk's
>Privacy and Property in the Global Datasphere, in S. Hongladarom and C. Ess
>(eds.), _Information Technology Ethics: Global Perspectives_, 94-107.
>(Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2007.)
>
>there's a ton more out there (including some of my own articles in _Ethics
>and Information Technology_) - but I hope this is a helpful start!
>
>What would be even better would be for our colleagues in different parts of
>the world to report / comment on this - Elizabeth and I will take careful
>notes!
>
>On that happy thought,
>
>cheers,
>- c.
>
>Distinguished Research Professor,
>Global Studies Center <http://www.drury.edu/gp21>
>Drury University
>Springfield, MO  65802  USA
>
>Guest Professor (fall, 2007)
>Department of Media Studies
>IT Park
>Helsingforsgade 14
>8200 Aarhus N
>Denmark
>Office: (45) 8942 9219
>Mobile: (45) 2986 8967
>
>President, Association of Internet Researchers <www.aoir.org>
>Co-Editor, International Journal of Internet Research Ethics
>http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/SOIS/cipr/ijire.html
>Co-chair, CATaC conferences <www.catacconference.org>
>Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes
><http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php>
>
>Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23
>
>
>
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