[Air-L] Online research ethics

[Alecea Standlee]

Dear List Members,

I was hoping I could get some feedback on an ethical
issue that I am trying to work through with my
dissertation commitee. 

I am conducting community and social network research
with a group online. Essentially, the group is a
collection of fiction writer hobbists, who write and
then 'publish" their work online. They publish in a
variety of venues, including personal websites, story
archives and public liveJournals. The interesting data
(for me) is in the form of their authors notes, where
the talk to and about other members of their group and
somewhat in their feedback, which is sometimes posted
with the stories. 

The dilemma is this. How do I consider this group with
regard to informed consent. I have three different
sets of recommendations
1) One of my advisors argues that the group is posting
on public websites and explicitly states that their
stories are for public consumption, so should be
treated as document data and cited using standard
citation practices for blogs and websites.
2) A second advisor disagrees and argues that the
group should be considered individual subjects,
including requests of permission to use statements,
pseudonyms for screen names and perhaps even consent
forms of some sort.
3) A third person says that no, it should be treated
as participant observation, that I should inform
members that I am using data from the authors notes
and feedback but not require consent forms.
Specifically, since the participants use screenames
and thus are unlikely to want to give me access to
their real names. Their "real" names are anonymous, so
I should focus on how to protect or not their screen
names...

What do you all think about the issue? Should I
contact the authors and not use the feedback, which
sometimes comes from people "outside" the core group?
Should I treat it like document websites? I am really
torn about what the ethical thing to do here is. 

Alecea Standlee MA. MA. PhD Student.
Syracuse University
Maxwell School of Citizenship
Department of Sociology


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