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

[Nishant Shah]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 5:44 AM, 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.
>
Hi Pawan, Good to see you here. I think your project is extremely
interesting and the kind of questions it poses are often faced by a lot of
us doing online ethnography; especially when the subjects in your work exist
in some kind of digital limbo and will have severe (personal and social
repercussions) when it comes to a 'coming out' and facing their sexuality.
Given that you are interested in looking at questions of self-construct and
digital identity, there are a few ways that I had found useful in doing my
own Ph.D. research work, when the subjects (even when I was an insider, or
they were friends) were not very cooperative or often just found the
research too intrusive in areas that they thought were 'personal'. I hope
some of them might help you in circumventing the problem.

1. One of the things to do is draw a sample from personal conversations and
communications. If you are able to establish yourself in the paper as an
'insider' it will be possible to look at your conversations (messages,
scraps, emails et al) with the community that you are looking at and make
your argumentation based on that. Also, it is more highly probable that
people you have personally interacted with, might consent more easily to let
their 'profiles' be cited.

2. Another thing that works really well is to move beyond the equation of
"profile = identity". In the kind of websites that you are looking at, there
are many other 'public' instances where similar and sometimes more eloquent
information is available. Looking at public forums, discussion groups,
travel and visit sections, calendars and events and perhaps some of the more
controversial face-offs and fights in the community, which is up in the
public archives, might be much more accessible for you and does not require
'personal' confirmation.

3. One of the most obvious ways to move beyond online ethnography is of
course to get into a personal physical interview mode. However, given the
very closetted nature of homosexual communities in India and your location
in the West (hence limited access) might not make this very feasible.

4. It is also possible that a lot of the people within the community that
you are looking at, might be expressing themselves through blogs, social
networking systems, and other creative spaces. These might be the more vocal
and more easily approachable people and might also help in strenghtening
your arguments around identity creation, rather than just looking at their
dating/hooking -up profiles.

>
> 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?
>

These are all the things that I have tried and have ended up making a much
more interesting (at least to me!) argument about questions of what it means
to have a techno-social identity. As somebody else has already mentioned,
the question of ethics is tenuous and often subject to interpretation. I
think the thing to focus on, in this particular case, is the validity of
your sampling and the imperative that your object of analysis has on your
project. Is it the only thing that will allow you to make that argument? If
so, then there is no escape but persuasion, talking, networking and finding
people who will allow you to use their personal profiles. however, if you
can locate similar instances in more public spaces, you can then go ahead
and use that material from there and see what turns up.

>
> If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. It'll be a great help.
>
> Thanks,
> Pawan Singh


Good luck with the project.

I shall look forward to reading up on it,

Warmly,
Nishant

>
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-- 

Nishant Shah
Doctoral Candidate, CSCS, Bangalore.
Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
Asia Awards Fellow, 2008-09
# 0-9740074884