[Air-L] Criteria for proving that online data (especially forum comments) are real?
Maria Eronen
m85327 at student.uwasa.fi
Mon Jul 30 06:29:01 PDT 2012
I want to thank you all for your helpful information about online data
validity. Since I'm analyzing morality in celebrity forum discussions,
I've been pondering a lot about the issues of trustworthiness in the
digital space. My material involves very hostile commenting (even
death threats to
particular celebrities). A lot of that data is now omitted from the
internet - I think because it is illegal to be accessed in public.
Interestingly the issue of data trustworthiness touches both research
(research ethics, reseach credibility - Michael dealt with these two
issues very thoroughly) and the actual participation online. Who can
you trust? What is the criteria of trustworthiness?
Maybe this sounds like a science fiction thing, but I think Rushing
and Frentz (1995: 180, "Projecting the Shadow: The Cyborg Hero in
American Film") have described this phenomenon of untrustworthiness
very well by introducing the problem of shadow. The "shadow" is not
the real 'self' but an outcome of technological proximity in which the
part of us that is projected onto the other is rejected.
One may ask, where do we situate our trust in digital environments?
One may also ask where do we situate our trust when internet research
is concerned - in the mercurial digital space itself or in a
researcher and her description?
Maria
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