[Air-L] Online research ethics

[Nishant Shah]

Hi Alecea,
Your supervisors seem to bring up some of the most standard issues faced by
most Ph.D. students working on digital cyberspaces. In my own dissertation,
where I analysed and explored many personal (but public) blogs, I was given
a clearance to treat them as standard web-content which was in the public
domain. However, for content which was available only to friends or to
people who had accounts or content posted in communities which required
membership for access to the material, I solicited acquiescence from the
individual bloggers, or where it was not possible, from the group
moderators.
I would ideally think that if the information does not require special
membership or rites of access, it is safe to think of it as residing in the
public domain and proceed with the work. I am not very sure about the
project as 'participant observation' because in my scheme of things,
participation observation includes the transparent location of the observer
within the community and a ready awareness of the subjects to 'perform' in
this presence.
I hope there are more discussions around this topic.
cheers
Nishant

On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 9:20 AM, Alecea Standlee <stan0504 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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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-- 
Nishant Shah
Ph.D. Student, CSCS, Bangalore.
Research & Development, COMAT, Bangalore.
# 0-9740074884