[Air-L] IRB and blogs

[Wendy M. Christensen]

I would call them "online publications" and find similar research that analyzes news/political blogs as online news publications to present to the IRB as examples of research dealing with similar material. With my research, I have found that IRBs sometimes just know very little about online research, so they often need examples and models of other similar research to help justify your approach.

Your student might also point out the very public news aspect of these blogs-- they are about the public issue of indie music, and not about a more personal subject matter. Sometimes even when a blog is technically public, if it is about a very personal matter (like illness, or family) there is an expectation of privacy/anonymity even when the blog is publicly accessible. In those cases I could understand going with pseudonyms, but not with blogs about indie music.

Hope that helps! -Wendy

Wendy M. Christensen, Ph.D.

Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bowdoin College
wchriste at bowdoin.edu

On Oct 16, 2010, at 8:56 PM, live <human.factor.one at gmail.com> wrote:

> I wonder if the student had called them 'online publications' there would be a completely different reaction.
> Because grandma posting about her foot calluses and Brooklyn Vegan, while both could be entitled 'blogs', are completely entirely different.
> IRB hasn't been updated that the word 'blog' in an of itself does not mean human subject specific content.
> 
> 
> On Oct 16, 2010, at 4:44 PM, Johnson, Thomas J wrote:
> 
>> A master's student I am working with was told by the Human Subjects Committee that in doing a textual analysis of indie music blogs that she could not list the name of the blog but had to use pseudonyms.  Has any heard of this before? They are public sites after all and their content is easily searchable.  If you were coding newspapers you wouldn't need to identify them as newspaper A or B.  I think it is crazy, but wanted to hear what you think.
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