[Air-L] ethics

Fri Apr 6 07:17:50 PDT 2018

Thank you for this Charles!

---
May all winds at your back inspire you, and may you have harmony and peace today.

On Thu, 5 Apr 2018 08:05:50 +0200, "Charles M. Ess"  wrote:

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  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
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--
Professor in Media Studies
Department of Media and Communication
University of Oslo

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