[Air-L] Ethical guidelines for Instagram

[Yukari Seko]

Hi Maria, 
(It looks I sent the following email to you privately without cc'd to AIR-L. Allow me to resend it to share the info with the rest of the community)  

Your project sounds fascinating! Please keep us posted.

I've been researching the topic of self-injury on visual social media, and conducted visual content analysis of self-injury imagery on Flickr and Tumblr. I have also conducted online interviews with people who self-injure about their motivations for posting imagery online. 

I am just preparing for a talk at the Canadian Associations of Research Ethics Board next week, and just put together guidelines for Internet researchers: 

Markham A. N., & Buchanan, E. A. (2012). Ethical decision-making and internet research (version 2.0). Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working Committee. Chicago: Association of Internet Researchers. (available online)

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Human Research Protections. (2013). Considerations and Recommendations Concerning Internet Research and Human Subjects Research Regulations, with Revisions. (available online)
 
McKee, H & Porter, J (2009). The ethics of internet research: A rhetorical, case-based process. Peter Lang.

Fossheim, H & Ingried, H. (2015) (Eds.). Internet Research Ethics. (open access book, available online) 

If your research involves clinical population, there are many guidelines available. Here's one recent paper about people with self-injurious behaviour and there's a section about online research:

Lloyd-Richardson, E. E., Lewis, S. P., Whitlock, J. L., Rodham, K., & Schatten, H. T. (2015). Research with adolescents who engage in non-suicidal self-injury: ethical considerations and challenges. Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, 9(1), 1-14.

Given that Instagram research is likely to involve visual materials, I'd also recommend:
Wiles, R., Prosser, J., Bagnoli, A., Clark, A., Davies, K., Holland, S., & Renold, E. (2008). Visual ethics: Ethical issues in visual research.
http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/421/1/MethodsReviewPaperNCRM-011.pdf


Also, for research that involves synchronous interactions with participant (e.g. via text/video chat, interaction via avatars), our lab recommend researchers to provide a list that contains reliable online resources, crisis line info and evidence-based self-interventions, and if they're not clinically trained, to have mental health professionals on board. 

Hope it helps!

Yukari

Yukari Seko, Ph.D.
SSHRC Postdoctoral Researcher
Self-Injury and eMental Health Lab
Department of Psychology 
University of Guelph 
Guelph, Ontario,Canada N1G 2W1 
yukari.seko at gmail.com
www.simhealthlab.com

On 2016/05/19, at 13:50, María González Aguado wrote:

> Dear members,
> 
> I'm writing you asking for ethical advice to conduct ethnography on
> Instagram. I'll really appreciate if you could let me know if there are any
> ethical guidelines or publications on how to conduct online research with
> people undergoing severe mental conditions, and if there is anything
> specific for Instagram. The only ones I know are the guidelines of the
> British Psychological Association. In the same way, if any of you are
> working online on sensitive topics, any advice is welcomed.
> 
> Thanks a lot in advance.
> Best wishes,
> María
> 
> -- 
> María González Aguado
> Research Fellow- Department of Sociology
> University of Leicester
> University Road
> Leicester
> LE1 7RH, UK
> _______________________________________________
> 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/


On 2016/05/19, at 13:50, María González Aguado wrote:

> Dear members,
> 
> I'm writing you asking for ethical advice to conduct ethnography on
> Instagram. I'll really appreciate if you could let me know if there are any
> ethical guidelines or publications on how to conduct online research with
> people undergoing severe mental conditions, and if there is anything
> specific for Instagram. The only ones I know are the guidelines of the
> British Psychological Association. In the same way, if any of you are
> working online on sensitive topics, any advice is welcomed.
> 
> Thanks a lot in advance.
> Best wishes,
> María
> 
> -- 
> María González Aguado
> Research Fellow- Department of Sociology
> University of Leicester
> University Road
> Leicester
> LE1 7RH, UK
> _______________________________________________
> 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/