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

[Jennifer Myers]

Hello Maria,

I am a doc student, but since I am doing my dissertation using publicly
available blogs with bloggers who have pseudonymous identities, I've had to
think about the issue of privacy quite a bit so I figured I would share my
process thus far.

First, I searched out researchers doing research such as this, and naturally
I went to my advisor and asked her what she did. She explained what she did,
but said that I needed to read up on the topic. So I read up on what others
were doing. I ran across AoIR's document on ethics and found a lot of useful
advice/information in Markham and Baym's edited book Internet Inquiry, which
lead me to many other authors that were discussing this topic. If you want
to email me privately, I can send you some of the articles and books I found
most useful.

Second, I decided that since this topic isn't black and white, I would
include a section within my literature review on what is currently being
done in instances such as this, what privacy in internet research means, ,
etc. I also discussed measures that I would be taking in my method chapter.
I know this isn't typically included but when I defended my proposal my
committee was happy I had addressed it so thoroughly, because they had
questions about this. Plus, all the reading and research helped me come to
my decisions.

Third, I contacted the Human Subjects Committee at my university and
discussed it with them. They determined that if it was publicly available to
anyone with Internet access then they would treat it as such.  Of course I
would need consent/permission from the participants that I chose to
interview. In my most recent discussion over my IRB application, they wanted
me to include a statement within my consent form (for the interviewees)
saying that if they chose to keep their blog identity that there is a chance
it would be linked to their blog. Although, I've decided I will interview
all of my bloggers, initially they approved that I would be able to include
blog posts from bloggers that I was not interviewing and would not need
consent since it was a public text without log-in or password. I was able to
work with the review board on creating a consent form that I could send via
email and their response indicated consent. Of course there was more to the
process and I haven't conducted my research yet so...

Since it was technically ok by the review board, I had to figure out my own
ethics as a researcher. One main question I had was about perceived privacy
- do people really think that what they write or say in a specific context
has the potential to be published and brought out to a larger audience that
wouldn't normally see what they said (i.e. an academic journal when they are
just writing a blog)? Was I comfortable pulling direct quotes from blogs
without telling the blogger when they can be traced back to the blog even if
I changed the blog name and URL? There were many other questions that I had
and it took me many months to figure them out, and I'm sure as I conduct the
research more questions will arise. I probably would have email this group
if I would have been a part of it then. In the end, I've decided to do what
I am comfortable with as a researcher within obvious research ethic
boundaries.

I hope you don't mind me including these, but here are some questions that I
thought might be useful to you as you make your decision. In my process I
found answering similar questions helpful so I figured I would include them.
Are you quoting all of the comments or are you just categorizing them. If
you are categorizing and publishing the results in aggregate then is it
likely that where the information came from will be discovered? When you
Google (or whatever search engine you use) the quotes do the sources of data
pop up? Do people have to log-in in order to post the comments? Can anyone
without log-in read the comments? What do you consider sensitive? Would your
commenters feel that what you think is sensitive is the same thing as what
they consider sensitive (i.e. do you know the groups well enough to make
this determination)?

Jennifer Myers
Doctoral Candidate at Florida State University
jennifer.b.myers at gmail.com