[Air-L] ethics

Wed Apr 4 23:05:50 PDT 2018

Dear AoIR-ists, including the AoIR Ethics Working Group,

Paula has it right, in my view - many thanks!

But there are some additional considerations that might be helpful for 
judging whether or not to identify the group by actual name.

One: is there anything in your method / analysis / research questions, 
etc., that _requires_ you to identify the group?  If not, then 
pseudonymizing it would be a recommendable way for enhancing the privacy 
and anonymity of individual group members. (As Annette Markham most 
usefully reminds us, method is ethics and ethics is method.)

Two: if identifying the group is important for some reason central to 
the research - this raises a difficulty in terms of just who in the 
group may have authority to grant permission to you to identify the 
group.  This is not an insurmountable obstacle, but something to chew on 
carefully.

Three: even if you have reasonably grounded permission to name the 
group, as Paula points out, the size of the group matters, i.e., it is 
easier to identify individuals in smaller communities than in larger 
ones, even if they are somehow pseudonymized.
As well: your methods and approaches may shade a further judgment / 
decision here.  That is, especially if you draw on more utilitarian 
approaches (which tend to prevail in the Anglophone countries, i.e., the 
U.S., the U.K., Australia ...), you may judge / decide that the benefits 
of naming the group - i.e., as this knowledge helps with your overall 
research project, goals, questions, etc. - override any risk to 
individuals who prefer anonymity.

If, by contrast, you draw from more rights-based approaches and/or, 
e.g., especially feminist / communitarian / participant observation 
methods, then you may think/_feel_ that you owe your informants a 
greater level of protection than a more utilitarian approach would 
require. (Cf. Hall et al, below).

FWIW, these topics were explored fairly thoroughly in the development of 
both the 2002 and 2012 AoIR ethics guidelines.  Some references from the 
latter that might be helpful:

Hall, G. J, Frederick, D., & Johns, M.D. (2004). “NEED HELP ASAP!!!”: A 
Feminist Communitarian Approach to Online Research Ethics.  In Mark D. 
Johns, Shing-Ling Sarina Chen, & G. Jon Hall (Eds.), Online social 
research: Methods, issues, and ethics, 239-252. New York: Peter Lang

Hudson, J. M. & Bruckman, A. (2004). Go away: Participant objections to 
being studied and the ethics of chatroom research. Information Society, 
20(2), 127-139.

Markham, A. (2006). Method as ethic, ethic as method. Journal of 
Information Ethics, 15(2), 37-55.

In my experience, a watershed example of working through this decision 
was presented by Janne Bromseth in her PhD work:
Genre trouble and the body that mattered. Negotiations of gender, 
sexuality and identity in a Scandinavian mailing list community for 
lesbian and bisexual women.  (Trondheim, Norway: 2007).
In Janne's case, a central ethical question involved whether or not to 
anonymize individuals as well as the listserv - in the context of a 
relatively small national population in which identification of 
individual members would be relatively easy. In particular, even in 
highly secular-rational and sexually emancipated Scandinavia, in the 
early 2000s, lesbian and bisexual women (along with other persons who 
sexualities / identities / preferences fell outside of what has been 
helpfully pegged as heteronormativity) still experience(d) no little 
discrimination and all the negatives of such marginalization. Hence the 
critical importance of protecting the identities of listserv members.

(This points to a further question: how sensitive / personal is the 
information affiliated with a given participant?  In a craft group, in 
contrast with Janne's listserv, it would seems less sensitive and hence 
less demanding of protection.  But, to use Paula's point, this is a 
balancing act that requires judgment as well.)

As an example of the feminist / participant-observation approach, even 
after receiving permission from the listserv owners to use the listserv 
for research, Janne chose (felt ethically compelled) to go above and 
beyond the minimal requirements for protection of anonymity and 
confidentiality - so as to ask for permission to draw on the listerv 
exchanges (anonymized) from all members of the list.
This was clearly a very risky decision - but it paid off handsomely, 
both ethically and in terms of the research itself.

(This is also in another way one of the most interesting dissertations 
I've worked through: as the interactions unfolded, it becomes something 
of a detective novel (Scandinavian krimi) - and at points is a real 
page-turner.  Not something to be said of every dissertation, for better 
and for worse.)

To be sure, all of this can become further complicated, at least to some 
degree, by the various additional affordances and implications of social 
media - something that the Ethics Working Group is attempting to come to 
better grips with.  Other members of the Working Group may want to add 
some comments along these lines.

In all events, I hope these additional comments will be helpful.
Again, many thanks to Paula for honing in on the central questions - and 
best of luck to you in your research.

- charles

On 05/04/2018 03:56, paula Todd wrote:
> What have they asked you to do? Are they requiring that second level of anonymity? Ie. do not identify the group? Its location?
> 
> How many group members are there?
> Are there so few they will be easily identified if you name the group?
> 
> It is a balance act usually between what you agree not to reveal and what needs to be revealed to keep your work accurate and relevant ...
> 
> Best,
> PJT
> 
> On Apr 4, 2018, at 9:25 PM, Markus, Sandra <sm3291 at tc.columbia.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hello.
> 
> I am a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University.
> My dissertation examines the practices of three crafting groups, which
> have an offline and online presence.
> I am interviewing members of the groups, who have requested anonymity.
> 
> So, if  I am using a pseudonyms for the members, is it ethical
> to identify the actual group's name, or should I use a pseudonym
> for the groups' name as well?
> 
> Any advice and articles on this issue would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Sandra Markus
> Teachers College
> _______________________________________________
> 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/
> _______________________________________________
> 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/
> 

-- 
Professor in Media Studies
Department of Media and Communication
University of Oslo
<http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>

Postboks 1093
Blindern 0317
Oslo, Norway
c.m.ess at media.uio.no