[Air-L] IRB and music blogs

[Margaret Borschke]

I conducted a small qualitative study of mp3 blogs a few years ago as a part of my (nearly finished!) thesis.  (I presented some of this work at AoIR 9.0 in Copenhagen.) This study included telephone interviews with the bloggers as well as textual and structural analysis.  The terms of my ethics approval allowed me to name the blogs but not the real names of the bloggers. I'm also a journalist, so my initial reaction was concern that it might render my work unverifiable.  (Journalists like everyone to speak on the record!) Given the public nature of their blogs, the requirement struck me as a little silly.  

But as my interest in mp3 blogs is primarily about the use of sound recordings in networks and the poetics of distribution via multiplication, I came to decide that the names of the blogs themselves were not relevant to my analysis and discussion.  And there is a big fat ethical elephant in the room when we talk about music bloggers:  I argue that sound recordings remain at the heart of mp3 blogs and we know that many bloggers do what they do without permission from copyright holders. Yes, they do this in public. Yes, most will happily remove tracks when asked, and yes, some artists and labels actively send material to blogs for review, but all of this still occurs in an atmosphere of hostility and uncertainty when it comes to media use online. 

So while music bloggers might be hiding in plain sight, and many use their blogs to make a name for themselves in their music community of interest,  I still think academic kid gloves might be warranted. 


Margie Borschke
Journalism and Media Research Centre, UNSW