[Air-L] Ethics of a student project

Graham Meikle G.Meikle at westminster.ac.uk
Thu Aug 21 12:53:06 PDT 2014


Hi

Perhaps rather than the student investigating their respondents, it would be a better solution to have the student get their respondents to research themselves before the student interviews them about what they found. For years now, in teaching privacy/visibility issues in social media classes, I've had the students stalk themselves before class, find out just how much information about them is available online, and consider how much of it is under their control. It always makes for a lively week's discussion and means what they have to say is informed by their own experience — so a similar approach would perhaps lead to some thoughtful and considered interviews for Jill's student.

Cheers, gm

-----------------------
Professor Graham Meikle
Communication and Media Research Institute,
Faculty of Media, Arts and Design,
University of Westminster,
HA1 3TP, UK

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From: Sarah Ann Oates <soates at umd.edu<mailto:soates at umd.edu>>
Date: Thursday, 21 August 2014 14:40
To: Mathias Klang <klang at ituniv.se<mailto:klang at ituniv.se>>
Cc: AOIR <air-l at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>>
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethics of a student project

This thread sparks a broader issue for me (I think the discussion here has been reasoned and thoughtful) and that is that I worry we are not communicating to students or to the broader public that there is no privacy online. Our data is constantly mined and used by corporations and governments in ways that would appall any research ethics board. How can we, as academics who can see the constant violation of privacy, make people more aware? I know this is a big issue, but just felt moved to say this. SAO


On Aug 21, 2014, at 9:23 AM, Mathias Klang <klang at ituniv.se<mailto:klang at ituniv.se><mailto:klang at ituniv.se>> wrote:

Hi Jill,
I have done a version of this in a class exercise where I divided the class into groups and each group had to find out as much as possible about either me or the other instructor. The rules where that they could not carry out any illegal acts but otherwise everything was allowed. The goal was not the actual information but the presentations where they had to interpret the information they found and to judge its reliability. At the time I had a large web presence while the other instructor had less of a web presence. Both of us had unique names, were at the same stage in our careers and about the same age. The project was interesting and most students had fun with it.

One problem that we encountered was that many groups took out credit reports on us. This didn't really bother me but I admit I wasn't expecting this move. We also realized that we would have to prevent this in future exercises as taking out a large number of credit reports can impact ones credit rating (at least in Sweden).

I think the project can be interesting and informed consent should cover the ethical question but as the situation above illustrates it is difficult to recognize the unforeseen consequences.

Mathias

On 21/08/14 08:05 am, Jill Walker Rettberg wrote:
One of our upper-level undergrads would like to write a paper about privacy using a slightly unusual methodology: he wants to find five informants who are willing to let him google them exhaustively in order to find out everything he can about them using legal, public online methods. Then he wants to show each informant the information and interview them, asking things like "did you know this information about you was accessible?" and more in order to find out something about what information people think is available about them, what is actually available about them, and how people feel about all the information out there about them and the possible disconnect between what they think and what is in fact out there.

My gut reaction is that I wouldn't want to let a researcher "stalk" me online like that, and if I wouldn't want to be an informant maybe I shouldn't allow the project, right? But I'm also guessing that the project might be approved by the ethics board so long as there is clear, informed consent. And it'd be interesting to see the results.

But beyond the ethics board: what do you think about a methodology like this? Do you share my gut reaction or am I overreacting? Would you let a student do it? And what might be better ways for a student to do a small scale research project on this topic?

Jill


Jill Walker Rettberg
Professor of Digital Culture
Dept of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies
University of Bergen
Postboks 7800
5020 Bergen

+ 47 55588431

Blog - http://jilltxt.net
Twitter - http://twitter.com/jilltxt

My latest book, Blogging (2nd ed), will be available from Polity from September 20: http://www.politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=0745663648





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