[Air-L] Online research ethics

[mhward]

My view is that you should approach the committee that will consider your
ethics application and ask them for guidance.

M-H


On 7/3/08 2:50 PM, "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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