[Air-L] Online research ethics

[Jim Porter]

> there are no absolute generalizations in terms of ethics - I would say
> - but there ARE things like accountability to the community and people
> that you are writing about and with - and this determines what ethical
> behaviour you pursue

I am glad to see Radhika mention "accountability to the community" as a key
variable in making this kind of ethical decision. Do community standards,
policies, practices, and feelings matter in this research decision? What we
have heard from various AoIR researchers (e.g., Bruckman, Ess) is that
communities or community members often have an expectation of privacy, even
when postings are public. Should researchers honor such expectations -- and,
thus, probably lean toward seeing formal informed consent?

My sense is that generally, yes, they should -- and not only in the interest
of avoiding harm to the participants as a collective but also in the
interest of avoiding community backlash against researchers. What Heidi
McKee and I have seen from our own research on Internet researchers -- and
yes, we regard that as human subjects research! -- is that most researchers
we've interviewed, and certainly most ethnographers, are careful to respect
community standards and beliefs because *not* doing so potentially impairs
future research. Harm to the researcher (and to future research) is also, I
would argue, a part of the ethical decision here.

Jim Porter






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James E. Porter
Co-Director, WIDE Research Center
Writing in Digital Environments
Olds Hall 7
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI  48824
porterj8 at msu.edu
office: 517.353.7258
fax: 517.353.9162
http://wide.msu.edu/
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