[Air-L] Online research ethics

[Radhika Gajjala]

My IRB suggests (at least so far) not to bother attempting to get HSRB  
for autoethnographies.

I agree Delia that this discussion is no different from RL.

On Mar 7, 2008, at 7:09 PM, dddumitr at ucalgary.ca wrote:

> Together with a colleague of mine, we are doing an autoethnographic
> research project in SL. Ethics has been a major issue since the very
> beginning. We are not doing research of other people/avatars, but  
> our own
> understanding of things and our reflexive processes are inevitably  
> formed
> in an interactional manner. We have asked for the opinion  of the  
> ethics
> committee in our department/school, and they have argued that since  
> this
> is autoethnographic, we actually need ethics applications in  
> relation to
> each other (since our project is collaborative and we share our  
> personal
> experiences).
>
> In my mind, the discussion about ethics in SL is no different from  
> ethics
> in RL. For instance, would you ask for consent if you do an  
> observation in
> a public place? Going to public places in SL (even if you require an
> account to come in) - how is it substantially different in ethical  
> terms
> than doing an observation in RL? I think these issues are hard to  
> answer
> and require a case-by-case decision. In environments such as SL,  
> doing any
> type of research that takes as its subject other avatars and their
> behavior, requires ethics procedures, in my view. I feel ambivalent
> however in arguing that you need to ask for permission if you do a  
> content
> analysis of the posters in SL, or of blog posts. Would you ask for
> permission if you want to do research on someone's personal  
> correspondence
> or diary, but would you do the same if that correspondence would be
> published in a book? On the other side, do bloggers have an  
> expectation
> that their stuff is 'public' (some do, some may not - so what do you  
> do in
> such cases?).
>