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ethnography and ethics
by bakera＠ohiou.edu 09 May '04

09 May '04

Hi, Eero, and all A long post I made in answer has fallen into the internet ether, so I will let elijah's stand in for me to some extent. I do want to say though, I don't agree that our individual attachments to personal ethics or the law are quite enough to stand in for guidelines. As a newer member of the aoir ethics committee chaired by Charles Ess, and as a presenter of a paper on ethics of researching online community and relationships, I applaud the aoir group for putting together a pioneering set of guidelines growing from people with allegiances to many different disciplines and countries. I also disagree that posting in a newsgroup is analogous to walking down the street. There is a large grey area between the totally public and totally private online which bears examination and continued attempts to reach at least a rough agreement on how and when to do research there. Finally, without having professional knowledge of the profession, it seems to me that journalists often have fewer strictures than researchers, not only because of our IRB's, but because of the demand for daily stories and the traditions of their profession. For example, they may be more than satisfied if three people back up their information, whereas we may need far more than that to support a thesis about everyday life. best, andrea baker (andee)

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ethnography and ethics
by ET 09 May '04

09 May '04

greetings aoir'ers, I am trying to get my head around the issue of ethnography and ethics. As I understand it, a researcher should announce themselves to the group they are researching and set guidelines etc for their involvement in the study group. This is seen as ethical, correct?? But not everyone has the same ethical stance, the same morality, the same values. I, for example, place far more emphasis on results than process - others place a higher value on process. As someone obsessed with results, I would prefer to see a person immerse themself in a group unannounced and live and breathe and interact with the study group as one of the participants. To me, if one is studying humanity one should be part of it, exposed to the same experiences, feeling the full swing of their emotions through their research. The obvious criticism of such an approach would be that one is too involved and therefore potentially producing inaccurate research. But is such research any less accurate than the arms length - dont get involved - approach where the participants are wary of the watcher? Does this desire to be immersed completely, passionately and unannounced make one an unethical researcher? Is such a form of research bad, or is there a normal, healthy school of thought proud to promote itself as the school of unethical research? And, of course, who should judge the ethics of another anyhow? I suppose what I am trying to ask is, is wanting to immerse oneself in research as an active participant with the same "no rules" approach as the other participants unethical and is it unacceptable to the broad body of researchers? Am I going to be lonely in my School of Unethical Research - members, 1 :-) see ya Eero Tarik Adelaide

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RE: [Air-l] ethnography and ethics
by ET 09 May '04

09 May '04

Hi Gloria, you wrote.... "This is of course a postmodern, feminist, qualitative approach to research that someone with a different ontological and epistemological outlook would reject, but that is an old and fruitless argument." I'm not sure its a matter of rejecting other philosophical viewpoints. We are all different, all with different viewpoints, different experiences. This is one of the reasons why I am not happy with "universal" ethical guidelines. An individual can only see the world through the eyes they have, no one can borrow my eyes, or yours to view the world. If having a "postmodern, feminist, qualitative approach to research" satisfies you then this is good. If, however, it doesnt satisfy someone else, that other person should be free to explore their own boundaries ( within the constraints of law and human rights) and arrive at an approach to research that satisfies them. Then we should all be happy, shouldnt we? regards, Eero Tarik Adelaide

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Re: [Air-l] researchers ???
by ET 09 May '04

09 May '04

hi, thanks to those who took the time to reply to my "researchers?" post, both via the list and off it. To those who replied off list, I did try to get back to you all personally, however one of the emails came back with an address or mailbox problem. If you didnt get a personal reply, you will know I at least tried :-) Once again, thanks regards, Eero Tarik Adelaide

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Re: [Air-l] ethnography and ethics
by ET 09 May '04

09 May '04

thank you to those who responded and thank you Charles for your long reply. I appreciate the fact that you must have taken a fair sized chunk out of your day to write your reply. To set the scene... 1. Yes, I have read the AOIR Ethics document. 2. When I make a comment like "results are more important to me than process", one should not feel at liberty to assume that I am making such a statement with an absence of any respect for human rights. I am well versed in what human rights are and have a very strong awareness of the issues. My respect for human rights doesnt exist because such rights are written in a document, my respect for them exists within me naturally. Any comment on any issue that I make is governed by my own ethics, by my own respect for human rights. And I note that whilst it is true that people obsessed with results have committed many hideous crimes upon humankind, so too have those obsessed with process and simply "doing what they are told". To reply... The problems with setting standards for ethics in online research are many. Firstly, ethical people probably dont need a great deal of guidance, they may naturally fall within your consensus boundaries most of the time, whilst someone hell bent on working outside of your ethical boundaries will do so anyway - and such a person may have no problem dishonestly manipulating their processes etc so that they appear to be ethical. Its like the tax department tightening a few rules to catch tax avoiders. All they usually achieve is making life more difficult for the honest whilst the dishonest just find a new way of cheating.(maybe US citizens pay their taxes honestly, here tax avoidance is a national pastime) I dont believe a set of guidelines will ever prevent unethical behaviour, all it does is make some people feel good :-) Secondly, looking at the AOIR document as an example, whilst it tries to be a guideline does it really change anything? Does it really address all areas adequately or even consistently? If I want to observe a usenet newsgroup are the AOIR guidelines adequate? And are the guidelines for usenet research tactics beyond controversy? Do the restrictions contained in the guidelines make sense to everyone for all circumstances and are they beyond argument? And as another list member pointed out - arguments or justifications about importance of a project are all matters of personal opinion. Thirdly, I also wonder why AOIR members place such a high standard against intrusion into peoples lives when our society has significantly lower standards. Everyday we see on our TV screens and in the paper, and in online news services, intrusive photos of people and intrusive or revealing information about them. Our society allows people to be identified when only alleged to have committed a crime with no regard for how destroyed their lives might be if found not guilty. Cameras are poked into faces at times of grief, hardship etc with no consideration at all for the individual. Walk down the street and you can photographed and your picture published in the paper without your consent. Why is it that when you deliberately post in an unsecure and non private forum on the internet you should enjoy perfect anonymity and privacy when we live in a society that does not have the same standard? What privacy did Mrs Beckham enjoy when allegations about her husbands behaviour started to surface? Was anyones identity protected? ................................................ I read a case study yesterday, by a commercial research company. They observed both a usenet group and a moderated Yahoo forum. They reasoned that since there was no moderator on the usenet forum they did not need to seek permission - and I imagine there would be many who would feel sympathetic to this view. They also argued that they did not believe copyright was an issue for information on the usenet forum - I imagine they would get a strong argument from many on this approach. They did reason that they needed to ask permission from the moderators of the Yahoo forum to enter the forum. Yet even this raises ethical issues in my mind. How can the moderators speak on behalf of all the members, and how can the moderators hand over the copyright ownership of individual posts? The other interesting issue in this instance was the fact that both forums had archived posts going back to the mid and early 90's. This was an attraction to the researchers. They happily went about using the archived posts in their research. But from an ethical viewpoint, isnt this also a problem? If its necessary to ask for permission of members of a forum today to be able to view their posts, shouldnt it also be ethical to ask permission from those who posted in the past? And this is probably impossible since many earlier members may have disappeared into thin air. There was one other very interesting ethical question raised by the study. The researchers observed that there were a few very regular posters. They asked a few of them if they could reproduce the posting exchanges in their study. The posters agreed, although one poster, who was famous for his contributions, requested that his identity NOT be concealed. It appears that the researchers agreed to this condition but later changed their minds.Isnt this unethical? Ethics appears to be a movable beast. The problem with ethical "rules" is that in an area such as research of a usenet forum, even though you might have general consensus on some issues, you are also likely to have quite significant disagreement over others. One might agree with everything in your AOIR guidelines but passionately disagree over how to access usenet forums. Should one then feel compelled to tow the "party line" over usenet forums, or is one at risk of being branded "unethical" merely because one disagrees in one area of endeavour. ....................................................................... Let me conclude by exploring the area of human rights - an area you brought up, Charles, in your reply. At the ultimate level in scoiety I am bound by everyone elses universal human rights and my need to respect the inalienable rights of others. At the secondary level I am bound by the laws and standards that the society I live in maintains. Do I really need another set of rules telling me what I can and cant do in matters of research when I am already bound by the rules above? Do I need "ethical" guidelines to tell me how to deal with the privacy of others when there are already laws in place to deal with this issue? And, in imposing guidelines upon the researcher, arent you reducing their enjoyment of their own human rights? As I said above, the society that we live in has lesser standards than your guidelines - and it is a basic human right for one to enjoy the same rights as others in society. Why should an internet researcher enjoy lesser rights than a journalist, for example? If the owner of a TV station is free to put a photo of me on the news and identify me, why shouldnt I be free to capture a public moment in time in a newsgroup and identify the words or actions of others? I am not expecting the right to invade their privacy by entering a private room, but I am expecting the right to discuss freely and openly that which people have put on the public record. To me, posting in a newsgroup is like walking down the street - you do so knowing everyone can see you. Well, thats just a few thoughts in reply Charles. regards, Eero Tarik Adelaide

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Re: [Air-l] the first internet war
by HERNANDO ROJAS 08 May '04

08 May '04

It seems that the real in-bedded reporters are the troops and not the journalists taken along for the ride. New tech 1, PR 0 --------------------------------- Hernando Rojas Mass Communication Research Center University of Wisconsin - Madison ----- Original Message ----- From: david silver <dsilver(a)u.washington.edu> Date: Saturday, May 8, 2004 11:35 am Subject: [Air-l] the first internet war > it's hard to wage a war when so many of us, including soldiers and > contracted soldiers, are wired. > > US powerless to halt Iraq net images > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3695897.stm > > david silver > www.theseptemberproject.org > > _______________________________________________ > Air-l mailing list > Air-l(a)aoir.org > http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l >

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ethnography and ethics
by Susan Leong 08 May '04

08 May '04

Hi Eero I think the others are quite right in thinking 1) it is always best to be open when conducting academic research. 2) that while not everyone has the same ethical standards, it is important to have some guidelines, to set a standard. Naturally ethical standards vary and it is up to the individual researcher as to how much they choose to abide by any seet of guidelines. As you so rightly asked "who should judge the ethics of another anyhow?" You may have a point in thinking that research conducted at arm's length is not necessarily more accurate but it is hopefully, more ethical. These sound like two separate arguments about accuracy (authenticity?) and ethics to me. The hoped for result of any academic research undertaken is that findings are taken seriously and thought to have contributed to the chosen field of study. That means your academic peers must be able to accept the standards you adhered to when conducting your research. While one may choose instead to be a member of the "school of unethical research" you would need alot more members of this new school to make your research acceptable. What I am really saying is, if one wants to be a member of any community, whether research or otherwise, there are bound to be certain norms and guidelines that govern how that community operates that one generally abides by. That is not to say, of course, that one cannot challenge these guidelines or exercise one's own judgement but to do so you must be ready to risk being excluded. Of course, you could then start your own community. ;-)

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the first internet war
by david silver 08 May '04

08 May '04

it's hard to wage a war when so many of us, including soldiers and contracted soldiers, are wired. US powerless to halt Iraq net images http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3695897.stm david silver www.theseptemberproject.org

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congrats on the reader
by Jonathan Sterne 08 May '04

08 May '04

Congrats to the editors and contributors of the AoIR reader! The ToC looks great, and I've already recommended the book to someone. Best, --J

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8 new papers + book on opensource.mit.edu
by Karim R. Lakhani 07 May '04

07 May '04

Hello All, We now have over 150 submissions on our website (exact count = 157). Congratulations to the whole community for contributing your early ideas and thoughts and making this endeavor worthwhile. Below you will find the details on the new papers. Thanks to all the authors for their submissions Also Michael Wechner has been very kind to have implemented search functionality on the website. He has set up a trial link here http://mit.oscom.org/ - Please go beat it up and if you like it we can integrate it into the main site. Many thanks to Michael! Ciao for now!!! Karim R. Lakhani MIT Sloan | The Boston Consulting Group Mobile: +1 (617) 851-1224 http://spoudaiospaizen.net http://web.mit.edu/lakhani/www | http://opensource.mit.edu Paper 1 Author: Ciffolilli, Andrea Title: The Economics of Open Source Hijacking and Declining Quality of Digital Information Resources: A Case for Copyleft http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/ciffolili.pdf Abstract: The economics of information goods suggest the need of institutional intervention to address the problem of revenue extraction from investments in resources characterized by high fixed costs of production and low marginal costs of reproduction and distribution. Solutions to the appropriation issue, such as copyright, are supposed to guarantee an incentive for innovative activities at the price of few vices marring their rationale. In the case of digital information resources, apart from conventional inefficiencies, copyright shows an extra vice since it might be used perversely as a tool to hijack and privatise collectively provided open source and open content knowledge assemblages. Whilst the impact of hijacking on open source software development may be uncertain or uneven, some risks are clear in the case of open content works. The paper presents some evidence of malicious effects of hijacking in the Internet search market by discussing the case of The Open Directory Pro ject. Furthermore, it calls for a wider use of novel institutional remedies such as copyleft and Creative Commons licensing, built upon the paradigm of copyright customisation. Paper 2 Author: Dahlander, Linus Title: Appropriating the Commons: Firms in Open Source Software http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/dahlander2.pdf Abstract: Firms in open source software (OSS) are active in a field encompassing all the characteristics of a public good, given the non-excludability and non-rivalry nature of OSS. As the case of OSS demonstrates, the fact that many important inputs to the innovative process are public should not be taken to mean that innovators are prevented from capturing private returns. The objective of this paper is to explore how firms appropriate returns from innovations that are created outside the boundaries of firms and in the public domain using the case of OSS. To do so, the paper draws upon an explorative multiple case study of six small firms that attempt to appropriate returns from OSS, with rich empirical evidence from various data sources. The cases illustrate how firms try a variety of approaches to appropriate adequate returns and that selling services seem to be the dominant trend. Firm also balance the relative inefficiency of traditional means of intellectual property right such as patents by putting greater emphasis on first mover advantages and creating network externalities. Paper 3 Author Rossi, Maria Alessandra Title: Decoding the "Free/Open Source (F/OSS) Puzzle" - a Survey ofTheretical and Empirical Contributions http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/rossi.pdf Abstract: F/OSS software has been described by many as a puzzle. In the past five years, it has stimulated the curiosity of scholars in a variety of fields, including economics, law, psychology, anthropology and computer science, so that the number of contributions on the subject has increased exponentially. The purpose of this paper is to provide a sufficiently comprehensive account of these contributions in order to draw some general conclusions on the state of our understanding of the phenomenon and identify directions for future research. The exercise suggests that what is puzzling about F/OSS is not so much the fact that people freely contribute to a good they make available to all, but rather the complexity of its institutional structure and its ability to organizationally evolve over time. Paper 4 Author: Stewart, Daniel Title: Status Inertia:The Speed Imperative in the Attainment of Community Status http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/stewart2.pdf Abstract: This paper examines the role of tenure in establishing social status within an online community of free software developers. As tenure increases, an actor's status becomes increasingly taken-for-granted, thus making it difficult for actors to generate mobility outside of their current social strata. The results of empirical analyses suggest that the broader community plays a major role in deciding one's social position-a judgment that can be made fairly quickly and decisively. Therefore, members of the community who desire high status should work quickly to establish a positive reputation or else run the risk of being cast into an inert low status social position. Paper 5 Author Stewart, Daniel Title: Social Forces and Constraint in the Attainment of Community Status http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/stewart1.pdf Abstract: A study of social forces at work within an online community of free software developers, this paper investigates the manner in which social forces exert pressure that initially shapes and defines an actor's status within the community, but eventually constrain that actor's movement within a status order. The results of empirical analyses at the dyad level show that, in the process of status attainment, community members tend to evaluate a focal actor's reputation according to publicly available social cues. Ironically, these same social cues eventually work to produce stability and constraint in an actor's status position by reducing heterogeneity in community status beliefs. Paper 6 Author: Blanas, George Title: SOS-ware [Strategic Open Software] Perspectives http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/blanas2.pdf Abstract: Certain types of software play a strategic role in the development of the various aspects of organizational life. One of these roles is knowledge development that can act as a facilitator of economic diamonds. We review the characteristics of strategic software and we try to answer the question whether there can exist open software development that would be able to incorporate these characteristics. Based on this review, and on certain case studies, we present a theory, on how open software might be able to close the gaps in knowledge creation and usage - or the reverse, ie. to become a vehicle for an acceleration of this hysteresis. Paper 7 Author: Blanas, George Title: SOS-ware DEVILS[Strategic Open Software DEVelopment ILlnesseS] http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/blanas1.pdf Abstract Certain categories of software play a strategic role in contemporary public and private organizations. While software use is accelerated and diffused to more and more people and organisations, software development follows a reverse trend where fewer players form oligopolies, with some of them having almost reached a state of monopoly in certain areas. The evil consequences of such an evolution can be numerous, some of them relate to economic and security dependence and some others to phenomena of knowledge dependence and hysteresis. Within the current paper, we formulate a general framework that categorises the types of illnesses in open strategic software development from a number of viewpoints and the types of damages that could be inflicted to organizations and states as a result of false expectations if these illnesses persist. Finally, we identify the areas where research is considered to be urgently needed. Paper 8 Authors: Lee, Jen-Fang & Tzu-Ying Chan Title: Theory Development for Organizational Platform of User Collaboration Innovation Community http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/leechan2.pdf Abstract: This study proposes the concept of the “User Collaboration Innovation Community”, tries to understand this new phenomenon by conducting projects where the opening of source software is the subject of this analysis, borrows the observation variables and propositions adopted by Mintzberg on structures of the innovative organization, and summarizes the opinions of scholars of organizational economics, the relationship between property rights and organization performance. This study further infers a series of conceptual framework and propositions on the relationships among “organization structure, property right, and organization innovation” for “the organizational platform of the user collaboration innovation community”. We expect that the construction of this concept framework will function as a concrete description and presentation of the innovation model of the User Collaboration Innovation Community and will serve as a clear path to be followed for continuous research in th e future. Book Gehring, Robert A & Bernd Lutterbeck Title: Open Source Jarbuch 2004 (in German) http://www.think-ahead.org/ Abstract: The "Open Source Jahrbuch 2004" (open source yearbook 2004) is the first publication in German to cover the topic with an interdisciplinary approach. In contains contributions from practitioners as well as from scientists and aims to supply the reader with a comprehensive picture of how rich the open source phenomenon is. Open source means much more than only software. The subtitle of the book, "Zwischen Softwareentwicklung und Gesellschaftsmodell", i.e. "Between Software Development and Social Model", circumscribes the reach of this new way of dealing with information artefacts. The book is directed towards decision-makers from both politics and business as well as to scientists doing reasearch in this field. It delivers first-hand insights as a basis for understanding the potentials and constraints of open source. -- Karim R. Lakhani MIT Sloan | The Boston Consulting Group Mobile: +1 (617) 851-1224 http://spoudaiospaizen.net http://web.mit.edu/lakhani/www | http://opensource.mit.edu -- Karim R. Lakhani MIT Sloan | The Boston Consulting Group Mobile: +1 (617) 851-1224 http://spoudaiospaizen.net http://web.mit.edu/lakhani/www | http://opensource.mit.edu

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