[Air-L] WeChat/Skype ethical issues

Sat May 4 04:59:43 PDT 2019

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

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c.m.ess at media.uio.no