[Air-L] avatar research ethics

[Jeremy Hunsinger]

Oh this was the gist of the big debate on slrl...  in second life, I  
don't research the people... so much as i research the systems of  
representation in relation to governance and relation to architectures  
and affordances.

The question was.... "When I take pictures of any random person using  
a building in sl, am I doing human subjects research?'

my answer is... no, because it does not matter which avatar/person is  
doing it, just the action that is being performed.  It is much like  
the observational studies of new york city and chicago where one  
stands on a street corner and takes pictures whenever one sees  
something of note.  it doesn't matter who does it, just that it is  
something you want to note.

however, that doesn't mean that i'm not using judgment in the  
selection of materials... I'm not taking pictures of everyone that  
enters and exists some virtual emporium of elicit action, nor doing  
studies of people based on their avatar.   thus I am consciously  
avoiding certain situations where I do think one could construct  
implications for the creation of a human subject.

I think Andy points out something significant, in terms of unobtrusive  
measures... that evidence that is found outside of intervention would  
be that.  The federal guidelines specify the term 'intervention' and I  
probably too much weight on it, but it is still there and it still has  
some meaning.

I think Steve is trying to point out something fairly significant that  
was just discussed somewhere else that I just saw and that is... 'to  
what extent can we take any given representation of a person, however  
abstract it may be, and relate it to the human subject?'

My answer is that since not all interactions/observations of humans in  
the research context construct those people as human subjects  
research, then it would be the same in virtual worlds too, only at one  
more level of abstraction.

To me, far too many people forget that documentary evidence, without  
interaction/intervention, such as standing on a street corner taking  
notes about who passes in general terms, observations not of specifics  
but of representations and related evidence, is not creating human  
subjects, as soon as you intervene beyond being a person scribling on  
a pad or taking pictures, you may very well be creating human  
subjects.  There is a broad body of research that no one has had any  
ethical questions about that just watches.  Not everyone intervenes,  
not everyone is constituted as a research subject through observation.



On Mar 7, 2008, at 10:49 AM, Steve Jones wrote:

> This connects to an interesting discussion I've had in another
> context, which has to do with whether, when one is doing research in
> Second Life, observations of, or interactions with, avatars are
> observations of or interactions with human subjects. I'm curious to
> know what others think.
>
> Thanks,
> Sj
>
> On Mar 7, 2008, at 10:43 AM, Jeremy Hunsinger wrote:
>
>>>
>>> I think one could do citation analysis without IRB approval...though
>>> I don't know the actual history of that form of research...because
>>> the real unit of analysis is the citation.  What I see happen most
>>> often in these discussion is that the online presence of text, pics,
>>> etc is being used as an access point to
>>> infer about the humans using the technology...that's human subjects
>>> research because the real unit of analysis is the person not the
>>> online text, pics, whatever.  The online content is an access point
>>> to gather information about the people.
>>
>>
>> I disagree, i think one can research systems and representations of
>> people without creating human subjects.  It is a question in that  
>> case
>> of the level of analysis of your inference.  If you are collecting a
>> whole bunch of blogs and doing a content analysis to talk about
>> bloggers, i do not think you are necessarily doing human subjects
>> research, but you could be.  If you stick to describing the blogs and
>> the interactions of text and what that means about the people that
>> create them that is likely not, but when you talk about an individual
>> creator doing things in the world, then you are.  it is the  
>> difference
>> between talking about the system or society versus talking about the
>> person.   You can use documentary evidence still in researching
>> subjects without creating a human subject, at least that is the way
>> most irb materials read.  documentary materials or data already
>> collected and collated by someone else is exempt.
>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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Jeremy Hunsinger
Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research,  
School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu 
)

Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a  
thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.  
--Byron