[Air-L] Online research ethics

[Radhika Gajjala]

I dont necessarily think research ethics or IRBs in themselves take  
this accountability fully seriously (nor can they actually) although  
AAA (anthropologists) have some guidelines (for whatever its work -  
since in-practice in offline "third-world" context where researchers  
go in from "first world" academia - whatever their ethnic etc identity  
- I have seen easy violations of these by sloppily trained researchers)


On Mar 7, 2008, at 12:05 PM, Jim Porter wrote:

>
>> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------
> 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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