[Air-L] Suggestions on ethics of using online data for academic research

[Sarita Yardi]

Other people on this list can speak better to the ethics of the
research itself, but a first easy step I would recommend is to put up
a website about yourself (your research self) that is hosted on the
ucsd .edu domain. Googling your name turns up nothing, at least on the
first page of results, so outside of this list, I might be skeptical
of your identity as a researcher too.

If you have a link to your page with your research interests and who
your adviser is, etc, that might help (although given the combination
of topic and demographic, it'll probably be tough going regardless).

Sounds very interesting though, good luck!



On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 8:14 PM, Pawan Singh <pawansinghh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I am Pawan Singh, a PhD. student in Communication at UC, San Diego. I am
> currently working on a paper that looks at questions of identity
> construction and performance online by gay men in the Indian context. I am
> basically looking at some of the user profiles on a popular dating/hook-up
> site used by gay men to understand how they self-construct identity and form
> relationships in this space. I understand that the data on these profiles is
> private even though it's in a public space.
>
> When I chose some profiles using purposive sampling, I contacted the users
> for their consent. Very few responded while others dismissed the research as
> hoax. I am investigating how I can go ahead and produce an virtual
> ethnographic analysis based on this profiles in an ethical fashion. I could
> change the names of the user profiles but does that suffice?
>
> If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. It'll be a great help.
>
> Thanks,
> Pawan Singh
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