At 18:40 21/12/2004, Mark D. Johns wrote:
At 11:48 AM 12/21/2004, Thomas Koenig wrote:
Blogging, Webpublishing and Usenet posting are demonstrably public activities. Unless you render the concept of "private" so ambigious that it becomes virtually unusable, this is an empirical fact, not a normative statement.
Therefore, publishing research on these kinds of communications does not violate any privacy/confidentialty laws. At least that is the case for most countries that guarantee some freedom of speech rights.
While I have no idea about the bylaws of specific universities or professional associations, I would strongly caution against regulations that curtail the rights of academics vis-a-vis non-affiliated citizens or even journalists.
Of course, some exceptions with respect to vulnerable persons apply, but by and large vulnerable persons do not do blogging.
BTW, you are not doing (experimental) research on human subjects, but on communications.
Thomas
That is your view, it is a common one, and you are entitled to it.
Some of it is my view, but some of it are empirically testable factual statements.
If you read the guidelines you would understand that they are simply that, not regulations.
I did read the guidelines and I am very aware that these are guidelines, but these are also guidelines I personally happen to disagree with in some respects. And even if "guidelines" are not legally binding, they still steer you into one direction or the other. There are other guidelines of other professional associations, too. When I read the guidelines of those associations, where I pay membership fees, I disagree much less, in fact, I agree. The American Sociological Association states, for instance: "(c) Sociologists may conduct research in public places or use publicly available information about individuals (e.g., naturalistic observations in public places, analysis of public records, or archival research) without obtaining consent. If, under such circumstances, sociologists have any doubt whatsoever about the need for informed consent, they consult with institutional review boards or, in the absence of such boards, with another authoritative body with expertise on the ethics of research before proceeding with such research. (d) In undertaking research with vulnerable populations (e.g., youth, recent immigrant populations, the mentally ill), sociologists take special care to ensure that the voluntary nature of the research is understood and that consent is not coerced. In all other respects, sociologists adhere to the principles set forth in 12.01(a)-(c)." (http://www.asanet.org/members/ecostand2.html) Now, this is pretty much what I have said (put more eloquently, to be sure), even though I did not even know about the wording of these guidelines until half hour ago(talk about disciplinary bias).
But, like it or not, some regulations, created not by AoIR but by various governments and institutions, do apply.
Yes, and I am still to see that national laws of democratic states that would prohibit the quotation of blogs. If they would, pretty much all blogging itself would be illegal, because most blogs quote each other on a constant basis. My guess is, that at least in the US and Germany, a law that would prohibit free speech in such a manner would be ruled unconsitutional by the supreme courts.
What is legal in one jurisdiction is not always legal in another.
Sure.
What is legal is not always ethical.
Agreed.
And what is legal and ethical is not always approved by an IRB.
Unfortunately also true.
I'm simply pointing out -- as is AoIR in adopting the guidelines -- that this is not a simple, "one size fits all" issue.
I do not think that I advocate a "one size fits all" approach. But I do want to have a law that allows in principle for quotation of blogs and the like, and then specifies some narrow exemptions to that rule. Just like the ASA guidelines do. Thomas -- thomas koenig, ph.d. department of social sciences, loughborough university http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/staff/thomas/index.html