Ethics and Internet Research
For me, the Internet has always been an interesting research object. One of the main reasons for my view has been the fact that data already exists and it is easily available. Compared to the normal methods of social scientists, interview, statistical data collection – the data just lies in the Web available for analysis and interpretation.
However, I’ve now started focusing on the ethics of research. I do know the world around us, particulally the US, is way ahead in this area. The situation here in Finland is somewhat more open: in social sciences we do not have ethics review committees and therefore role of researcher is more important when choosing whether something can and should be done.
Unluckily, my master’s degree doesn’t include any research ethics. I don’t know the situation in other universities, but I do assume that real talk of research ethics starts in post-graduate studies. So, here’s some good hints for those still working with the Master’s degree and planning to analyze something related to online life – this may be blogs, IRC-channels, communities, websites, …
The first thing one should check is the Association of Internet Researchers’ ethical guideline (2002). The guideline provides a set of questions relevant for making decisions, however it does not provide many practical hints. For those, one needs to search the extensive literature, also collected in the ethical guideline.
One reference I’ve used is Sharf ‘s (1999) observations. She has five guides for everyone studying online communities:
- the effects of the research should be evaluated throughout the research period
- the researcher should inform the community about his research and the purposes of it
- researcher should get consent from the participants
- the participants should be allowed to review and comment the research
- the privacy and wellbeing of the virtual community should be maintained even during the research
These outline rather well the special nature of Internet research: you may be observing people who do not know they are being observed, like they are among friends. The community may include topics participants are not comfortable to discuss if their identity is known by wider audience. So, us, as researchers should make sure that we do not hurt the communities and the people we aim to study.
Tags: communities, ethics, research