My thanks to all who responded to my query about ethical guidelines for online discussion research. Below is a compilation of the sources mentioned in the 5 replies, two of which were posted to the list as a whole. (I've noted contributors' names at the end of this message, along with a key to their contributions.) * Discussions within AoIR * Web resources * Publications ===================== * Discussions within AoIR Charles Ess posted a helpful summary of the state of play within AoIR, mentioning the Ethics Working Committee preliminary report of October, 2001, (see web resources) and a forthcoming matrix of the kinds of questions that should be considered by "researchers and relevant oversight bodies". Charles notes that he expects to post a draft to the list for comments once the Spring term wraps up. Charles and two others also mentioned the discussion that took place around the preliminary report at the October 2001 AoIR conference. A summary of this discussion, "Research Ethics in a Virtual World: Some Guidelines and Illustrations," was written by Nicholas Jankowski and Martine van Selm: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/depts/crict/vmpapers/nick.htm One of the central debates, as Charles notes in his message, has to do with the nature of informed consent, confidentiality and how one weighs participant protections alongside the quality and potential impact of the research. The debate here is between those who would advocate a more "deontological" approach--in Charles's words "one less inclined to override subjects' protections in the name of research goals and its ostensible benefits"--and the "utilitarian" orientation that takes into consideration factors that might, in some ways, take a less strict interpretation of participant protections for the sake of research. During the October conference, papers by Amy Bruckman, "Ethical guidelines: a strict interpretation," and Susan Herrig, "Ethical challenges to doing research on the Internet: the CMDA perspective" came to stand for the two ends of this spectrum. Amy Bruckman's guidelines can be found at: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/ethics/ [CE] Several also mentioned the guidelines developed by Storm A. King, published in the issue of "Information Society" cited below, which take a more utilitarian approach than the above. Vincent Dwyer sent the link below to an abstract of the article, which includes an email link to King to request the full article: http://webpages.charter.net/stormking/eth-abs.html [VD] * Web resources AoIR Ethics Working Committee preliminary report http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.html The preliminary report includes a very helpful annotated bibliography in Addendum IV. AoIR Ethics Working Group http://cddc.vt.aoir/ethics This site, supported by AoIR member Jeremy Hunsinger, serves as the Ethics Working Group repository. It includes pdfs of 6 articles and helpful links to other web resources compiled by the group leading up to the preliminary report. * Publications Yvonne Waern posted this reference to the list and offered to make her report available to anyone interested: Waern, Y. "Ethics in Global Internet Research." Report from the Department of Communication Studies, Linköping University, 2001:3 [YW] e-mail: yvonne.waern@tema.liu.se Charles Ess and Lois Ann Scheidt mentioned the special issue of _The Information Society_, vol. 12, issue 2, 1996. Specific articles noted in that issue included (in order of appearance): Thomas, Jim (1996a). Introduction: A debate about the ethics of fair practices for collecting social science data in cyberspace. The Information Society 12(2), 107-117. [LS] King, Storm A. (1996). Researching internet communities: Proposed ethical guidelines for the reporting of results. The Information Society 12(2), 119-127. [LS] [CE] Waskul, Dennis and Mark Douglass (1996). Considering the electronic participant: Some polemical observations on the ethics of on-line research. The Information Society 12(2), 129-139. [LS] Boehlefeld, Sharon Polancic. (1996). Doing the right thing: Ethical cyberspace research. The Information Society 12(2), 141-152. [LS] Herring, Susan C. (1996). Linguistic and critical analysis of computer-mediated communication: Some ethical and scholarly considerations. The Information Society 12(2), 153-168. [LS] Reid, Elizabeth M. (1996). Informed consent in the study of on-line communities: A reflection on the effects of computer-mediated social research. The Information Society 12(2), 169-174. [LS][CE] Thomas, Jim (1996b). When cyber research goes awry: The ethics of the Rimm "Cyberporn" study. The Information Society 12(2), 189-198. [LS] Lois Ann Scheidt sent a bibliography from a paper she had done, which included the following in addition to those mentioned above: Association for Computing Machinery. (1992, October 16). ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Available at: http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html [LS] Frankel, Mark S. and Siang, Sanyin. (1999). Ethical and legal aspects of human subjects research in cyberspace: Report of a Workshop. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Available at: http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/sfrl/projects/intres/main.html [LS] Saunders, Kurt M. (2000). Human subjects research in cyberspace. Computer Freedom and Privacy 2000. Available at: http://www.cfp2000.org/news/student_reports/humansub-saunders.html [LS] Suler, John (2000). Ethics in Cyberspace Research. In Psychology of Cyberspace. Available at: http://www.rider.edu/users/suler/psycyber/ethics.html [LS] Amanda Lenhart sent the following, an interesting utilitarian-oriented perspective for medical practitioners using social science methods: Eysenback, G., & Till, J. E. (2001). Ethical issues in qualitative research in internet communities. British Medical Journal(323), 1103-1105. http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7321/1103 [AL] Lynne Schrum, "Ethical Research in the Information Age: Beginning the Dialog," _Computers in Human Behavior_, Vol. 13 (2), pp. 117-125. [CE] Charles Ess comments:
really excellent for its discussion of the qualitative research tradition and its connecting extant guidelines with research on listservs. Schrum develops a list of ten guidelines that stress that the authors of listserv postings are the owners of that material; e-mail should be treated as private correspondence "that is not to be forwarded, shared, or used as research data unless express permission is given"; and she likewise stresses the importance of informed consent and protecting the confidentiality of listserv members."
Sharf, B. F. (1999). Beyond netiquette: the ethics of doing naturalistic discourse research on the internet. In S. Jones (Ed.), Doing internet research (pp. 243-256). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. {This is the only cite I had in my pocket 4 days ago!} Once again, my thanks for all these valuable contributions. Contributors: [YW] Yvonne Waern <Yvowa@tema.liu.se> [LS] Lois Ann Scheidt <lscheidt@indiana.edu> [VD] Vincent Dwyer <vdwyer@arrakis.es> [AL] Amanda Lenhart <alenhart@pewinternet.org> [CE] Charles Ess <cmess@lib.drury.edu>