[Air-L] IRBs and Blogs

[Elizabeth Buchanan]

Hi, all,

Sorry to be late to the conversation. According to the strictest US definition from CFR, blogs are not "human persons." and typically are outside the scope of IRB review. I have seen boards ask for anonymization or pseudynomization of names, sites, etc, but this might not be appropriate according to your methodology. 

Here is a blurb form a forthcoming paper I have:

From a research ethics perspective, in the United States, research conducted using a blog as a data source would not be reviewable by an IRB. For instance, if a researcher used only text from a blog, as part of an analysis, and did not interact with the blog author through, e.g.,  interviews or surveys,  no IRB review or approval would be needed, as it is not considered "human subjects" under the federal definition (45cfr46.102f): “Human subject means a living individual about whom an investigator (whether professional or student) conducting research obtains(1) Data through intervention or interaction with the individual, or (2) Identifiable private information.”  “Identifiable private information” is  “information about behavior that occurs in a context in which an individual can reasonably expect that no observation or recording is taking place, and information which has been provided for specific purposes by an individual and which the individual can reasonably expect will not be made public (for example, a medical record).” Therefore, if a researcher is getting data from a blog that is public, then it would not meet the criteria for review as set forth in the US regulatory documents.



Best,

e.


Elizabeth Buchanan, Ph.D.
Director
Center for Information Policy Research
School of Information Studies
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
414.229.3973

Principal Investigator, 
Internet Research Ethics Commons
internetresearchethics.org
(NSF Project # 0924604)

elizabeth at internetresearchethics.org

On Oct 17, 2010, at 5:00 PM, air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org wrote:

> air-l at listserv.aoir.org