[Air-L] considering how to think about facebook re: research ethics and maybe privacy

[Liza Potts]

I've been working with a start-up trying to build a new platform focused on
privacy, and they've had to work through their own issues on whether this is
a teenager's sign on a bedroom door or if this will be really locked down
and "safe" (as much as it can be, right?). One of the ways they plan on
implementing this is through encryption. The kind of encryption where the
platform does not store this key, only the client stores it and can share it
with others. It eliminates the "show us x's account, x's group's posts, x's
chats, etc." Of course, nothing is unhackable.

That said, as a researcher, I have a really strong (vampire?) policy: If
they invite me in, knowing I'm a researcher and will publish what I find,
then I'm going to work. But if it is locked down (and a Private/Closed group
on Facebook meets this criteria), I typically do not go knocking.

Of course, in my major research area (disasters), the information tends not
to be locked down because people are moving as fast as possible to share it.
There is great incentive for them to keep these conversations public, not
the least of which is huge social ROI. However, in my other research area
(digital entertainment/drm), the opposite can be true - but since I look at
sites such as Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, etc. I've had pretty good luck
so far.

Liza
______________________________________
Liza Potts, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Writing, Culture, and Technology
Co-Director, CeME Lab
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA 23529
AIM: LizaPotts  Skype: lkpotts
http://ceme.digitalodu.com/

On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 10:46 AM, jeremy hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu> wrote:

> Michael brought up the example of what the understanding of privacy might
> mean in a group marked private on facebook and what that would mean for a
> researcher.
>
> I responded comparing facebook to a privately owned shopping mall with
> publicly accessible stores and publicly accessible common areas, with all
> areas covered by video cameras and other surveillance technologies.   That
> is still my perspective on facebook, but I wonder how much work can a group
> do on facebook to maintain any real sense of privacy beyond the request.
> By requested privacy I mean it is parallel to the signs that teenagers put
> on their doors in their parents home, it is a recognizable request for
> distance and separation that in most practical matters is respected 'day to
> day' but is summarily ignored once anything of import happens and sometimes
> even otherwise ignored.  I'm thinking that much of what happens in regards
> to stated privacy on the web fits under something like either a requested
> privacy or really false privacy, with only 'real' privacy existing on the
> web (or the internet in general) when there really is no way to obtain the
> information provided wi
>  thout agreeing to the terms of privacy.   Also there might be a difference
> between actually having a sense of 'privacy' in such public arenas and
> requesting anonymity, which is really the sort of value one might expect in
> a shopping mall, 'just another anonymous individual'
>
> thoughts?
>
>
> Jeremy Hunsinger
> Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
> Political Science
> Virginia Tech
>
>
>
> Everything you can imagine is real.
> --Pablo Picasso
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>