[Air-L] Online research ethics

[Lois Ann Scheidt]

The same is true here as well.  However, a team "autoethnography" 
wouldn't be about the self which is how the issue has been structured 
in discussions I've had on campus.  I can see why the IRB felt that 
application for approval is necessary.  And yes, it is probably 
overkill BUT again I am talking about application for human subjects 
approval not about the requirement that the subjects sign statements 
allowing themselves to be part of the research project.  In this case 
requiring signed consent forms would be massive overkill.

Lois Ann Scheidt

Doctoral Student - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana
University, Bloomington IN USA

Adjunct Instructor - School of Informatics, IUPUI, Indianapolis IN USA and
IUPUC, Columbus IN USA

Webpage:  http://www.loisscheidt.com
Blog:  http://www.professional-lurker.com


Quoting Radhika Gajjala <radhika at cyberdiva.org>:

> 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?).
>>
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