[Air-L] IRB and blogs

[Julian Hopkins]

I would agree with what Wendy said, and others, about the need to consider
what bloggers expected their audience to be. I faced most or all of the
issues discussed above, and these are my solutions.

1. Long term observation of their blog, including archiving their blogposts,
etc.: I asked for their permission. 
2. Use of direct quotes that are searchable: I asked for permission from the
blogger to use direct quotes (one declined, and I need to paraphrase the
quotes).
3. Anonymity and pseudonyms: although most of those I interviewed wanted me
to use their real name/online pseudonym, I decided to anonymise them (I told
them it was standard practice). I did this because of the issue of
unintended audience, and also because they may not like what I say about
them in the end. 
Additionally, I found it to be advantageous in interviews sometimes, when
the interviewee would pause, and say - 'This is anonymous right? Well, ...'
and then proceed to give some juicy details I may not otherwise have
obtained. For me, this made anonymising them worth it, although it is quite
a headache when it comes to reporting the results (see point 2).

I also had a sticky post on my blog announcing that I was researching blogs,
and invited bloggers to give their opinion on two research-ethical questions
(and two others related to my research):
"Will a blogger mind if s/he finds out I've been storing all his/her posts
for a month or more, and doing analyses on the topics covered and the way
s/he interacts with commenters?"
"Should I ask permission to 'observe' a blog in detail? And if the answer is
yes, why? I mean, if a blogger wants to keep his/her blog private, why not
just password-protect it?"

People can see their responses here
(http://julianhopkins.net/index.php?/archives/84-Anthroblogology-Monetisatio
n-in-the-Malaysian-Blogosphere.html), if interested.

Cheers,
Julian

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-----Original Message-----

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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010 18:44:34 -0500
From: "Johnson, Thomas J" <tom.johnson at austin.utexas.edu>
To: "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Subject: [Air-L] IRB and blogs
Message-ID: <25C010B6-D82E-4E40-9EFF-9A25F14A0CDB at austin.utexas.edu>
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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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