[Air-L] Online research ethics

[joana ro]

Hey,

the Blogs I am using for my Diss are being treated as Web content too and I
am citing them accordingly.

Doing my Diss in the literary studies department this was accepted without
further discussion, i guess because -  basically - the
author-as-an-inidivdual-subject is not a category given much consideration.
So if I am speaking about the "Blogger" I am talking about a textual
subject.

Still textual subjects obviously have a lot to do with who and what we are
and definitely deserve protection.

The Blogs I am dealing with (Soldiers Blogs) have mostly been written about
in the press and are all under censorship by the Pentagon anyway - so that
complicates the question even more, but makes it ok for me to also treat
them as public material.

Sorry, as you can see I think this is a difficult issue too.

Best,
Johanna

Sfb War Experience
University of Tuebingen
Germany



On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 5:07 AM, mhward <mhward at usyd.edu.au> wrote:

> 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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