[Air-L] a question about privacy protection and copyright in Internet research

Radhika Gajjala radhika at cyberdiva.org
Fri May 6 04:37:59 PDT 2011


Maria - this dilemma persists for every beginning phd project starting with
email lists (see my book from 2004 on Cyberselves: Feminist Ethnographies of
South Asian women as an example from another generation)

My 2 cents -

copyright -  If its public - they dont have a law suit case - besides you
also got actual email permissions from them as well.

Ethics - if its sensitive material - dont reveal their real of youtube
account names?

share your dissertation with them?

 - but let's see what others have to say:)



Finish your project - then worry about this as you get nearer to
publication.

r



On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 7:20 AM, Maria Eronen <m85327 at student.uwasa.fi>wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I am Maria, a PhD student from Finland and currently working with my thesis
> concerning how celebrity gossip leads to moral discussion on the Internet. I
> think I have some problems with research
> ethics. My research material consists of publicly available discussions
> from YouTube, various online newspapers and
> celebrity-related forums. Because I'm conducting linguistic analysis, it is
> reasonable to cite comments from
> those online discussions.
>
> One central topic I am focusing on is autobiographical moralizing (for
> example, discussion participants
> compare violence involving celebrities with their own-life experiences of
> violence, such as telling how their partner once hit them).
> This kind of material is what I categorize as sensitive and see it better
> not to refer to pseudonyms or usernames. I make it clear in
> my work that in some cases I see it better to stress privacy protection
> over copyright. However, I will mention the
> forum, where the comments come from, as a source (such as YouTube). I have
> personally contacted every one
> whose comments I see as sensitive. I want to use even senstive comments
> because they are valuable material
> from the point of view of the  research. No one of them whom I contacted
> has said no. But of course, I'm not even sure whether they have
> seen the posts I sent to them (actually one replied to me and just wanted
> to know more about the study).
>
> In order to protect myself, I have not copied the whole comments, but left
> some parts of them out of the
> publication. The problem is now that by letting them know such a research
> they might see their posts in the
> dissertation and start a law case (because I don't authorize their words).
> The comments I cite without referring
> to the users as authors do not seem as pieces of creative art, but they are
> typical examples of online discussion.
>
> However, I'm a bit concerned because the posters whom I cite without
> permission, are American. The work itself will
> be published in Finland.
>
> Do you think this kind of privacy protection is a good reason to leave the
> usernames out? Am I too concerned or could this lead to serious
> consequences? Has anyone had similar experiences?
>
> I would be very thankful if you had time to help me,
>
> all the best, Maria Eronen
>
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-- 
Radhika Gajjala
Director, American Culture Studies
Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies
101 East Hall
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH  43403

http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik



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