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

[Maria Eronen]

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