[Air-L] WeChat/Skype ethical issues

[Loretta Anthony-Okeke]

Thanks for your comments and suggestions, Charles. 
Much to consider.
Agree a well-designed informed consent protocol is key
Will have to see which of the more secure channels are not restricted in China and are acceptable to the ethics committee 
I have often seen this as more of the university taking some of these decisions more for legal reasons (can data be compromised in terms of storage and transfer?) rather than ethical ones.
As an ‘ethicist’ myself ethical considerations I think are central to any research design
I hope a bit of extra work on this by then won’t put my students off engaging in research and time is not on our side (they’re slowly losing the will to go on- a PhD this is not after all)
In the meantime, I will follow up on your suggestions and look forward, with Keith’s kind permission, to reading some of his suggestions.

Best,

Loretta 




> On 4 May 2019, at 1:00 pm, Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess at media.uio.no> wrote:
> 
> Hi Loretta, copy to Keith Douglas,
> 
> Not an easy set of questions - but, like a good philosopher (and ethicist), let me respond to the question with some additional questions...  (This is why the Athenians gave Socrates hemlock, but I'm willing to take a chance here ...)
> 
> First of all, what are the primary research methods and aims? It has become a happy and useful commonplace to quote Annette Markham's mantra, ethics is method and method is ethics.  Much to be said in its favor and endorsement - but minimally, in this case, these questions help sharpen the definition of what sorts of data are being collected, and thereby what the more precise ethical (and legal) risks may be.
> 
> In particular, will it be required by the methods involved, especially in the write-up and dissemination stages of the projects, to use direct quotes or images from the interviews?  If the answers head in the direction of yes, then that increases the need for informed consent from the interviewees.
> 
> More broadly: you didn't mention the possibility of informed consent. But offhand, why can there not be an informed consent protocol for the interviewees in which they acknowledge the possible risks to their identity / privacy and personal data?
> 
> And/or: is your university ethics committee more concerned about the security of the data itself, both during its collection (over WeChat/Skype) and/or once it's collected - e.g., a student recording interviews in China, such that the interview data itself has a medium risk of interception / leakage / ... ?
> 
> In these directions: AoIRist Keith Douglas has contributed a fine overview on "IT Operational Security" that outlines steps that can be taken to improve the security of data and related research work. This will be included in the forthcoming Internet Research Ethics 3.0 documents that will be made available to AoIR members for comments and suggestions later on this summer.  Briefly, a first move would be to be in touch with your university IT / security department to see if they can offer the expertise needed to enhance the security of the data collection procedures and storage (and destruction).  A second move would be to avoid WeChat and Skype and use more secure channels instead.
> 
> (While not wanting to put Keith on the spot - if you would like to review his list of suggestions in greater detail, with his permission, I'd be happy to send it along.  I should point out that it has yet to be reviewed or commented on by the AoIR Ethics Working Group: this will start up in another couple of weeks or so and, I'm sure, will inspire additional suggestions and good ideas.  But in the meantime, from my perspective, his list is an excellent starting point.)
> 
> Stuart Schulman has properly commented that university ethics committees are often far behind in terms of understanding emerging technological possibilities and affordances, and thereby especially the finer-grained details of the ethics involved.  But many of us - now after nearly 20 years of this kind of work - have found that on a good day, researchers are often successful in explaining to their review boards how their research designs meet (or more than meet) the ethical guidelines now widely available from AoIR, the Norwegian Ethical Committees (which have the particular utility of paying attention to the new GPDR), as well as, e.g., the recent UK / discipline-specific
> British Psychological Society (2017). Ethics Guidelines for Internet-mediated Research.
> INF206/04.2017. Leicester. www.bps.org.uk/publications/policy-and-guidelines/research-guidelines-policy-documents/researchguidelines-poli
> 
> It requires considerably more time and effort on the side of the researchers to help inform their review boards in these ways - but again, many researchers over the years have found that doing so not only helps get their and their students' work "passed through" - but also leads to better research and subsequent dealings with the review boards down the road.
> 
> Hope some of this is helpful - best of luck!
> - charles
> 
> 
> 
>> On 04/05/2019 11:45, Loretta Anthony-Okeke wrote:
>> Dear colleagues,
>>  My name is Loretta and I am a Senior Tutor at the University of Manchester. I am currently supervising a number of Chinese Master’s students for their dissertation projects. Most of them want to either go to China and conduct face-to-face interviews with Chinese research participants in China, or remain in the UK and conduct online interviews with the same sample using WeChat, Skype.
>>  The former is usually deemed medium-risk (i.e. related to research outside the EU/EEA, in countries with travel advisory, etc.) but with new data protection guidelines in the UK (GDPR and all), university ethics committee is now classifying audio/video data collected through these online mediums as medium-risk as well, even when the data is collected here in the UK.
>>  I am hoping that you can advise on how students might enhance data protection as they outline the main ethical issues with this aspect of their research design? Is it wishful thinking that there might be a way data collection through Skype/WeChat can be assessed to be low-risk?
>>  Many thanks.
>>  Best wishes,
>>  Loretta Anthony-Okeke
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> 
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