[Air-L] online research ethics

[Rhiannon Bury]

----- Original Message ----
From: David Brake <d.r.brake at lse.ac.uk>

...It is true that (non-friend/password protected) bloggers  
are making their material available to be read. But in my own  
interviews (with 22 personal webloggers) their imagined and desired  
relationships with readers varied widely and a few of them said they  
had no intention to be read by anyone else when they started. We need  
to leave room for the people we study to fool themselves on issues  
like this (one of the central points of my upcoming thesis in fact!)

Hmm, I don't believe that they are being totally honest with you or themselves, David. They may not have  *expected* anyone to read it, (so many blogs, so little time), but if they didn't secretly *hope* to find some sort of audience, they wouldn't have set up a networked blog in the first place. Sounds like a face-saving kind of statement to me. In any case, I'd like to hear more at some point.

Rhiannon