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

[Mark D. Johns]

I would agree with Radhika. If posted in a public forum, and if you
have contacted them to allow them to object, I don't see a problem
with copyright at all. As for ethics, obscuring  their user names, and
perhaps the forum location, affords more protection than they have
given themselves when they posted in the first place.
--
Mark D. Johns, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Head of the
 Department of Communication Studies
Luther College, Decorah, Iowa USA
http://academic.luther.edu/~johnsmar/
-----------------------------------------------
"Get the facts first. You can distort them later."
    ---Mark Twain



On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 6:20 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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