Dear AoIR-ists, including the AoIR Ethics Working Group, Paula has it right, in my view - many thanks! But there are some additional considerations that might be helpful for judging whether or not to identify the group by actual name. One: is there anything in your method / analysis / research questions, etc., that _requires_ you to identify the group? If not, then pseudonymizing it would be a recommendable way for enhancing the privacy and anonymity of individual group members. (As Annette Markham most usefully reminds us, method is ethics and ethics is method.) Two: if identifying the group is important for some reason central to the research - this raises a difficulty in terms of just who in the group may have authority to grant permission to you to identify the group. This is not an insurmountable obstacle, but something to chew on carefully. Three: even if you have reasonably grounded permission to name the group, as Paula points out, the size of the group matters, i.e., it is easier to identify individuals in smaller communities than in larger ones, even if they are somehow pseudonymized. As well: your methods and approaches may shade a further judgment / decision here. That is, especially if you draw on more utilitarian approaches (which tend to prevail in the Anglophone countries, i.e., the U.S., the U.K., Australia ...), you may judge / decide that the benefits of naming the group - i.e., as this knowledge helps with your overall research project, goals, questions, etc. - override any risk to individuals who prefer anonymity. If, by contrast, you draw from more rights-based approaches and/or, e.g., especially feminist / communitarian / participant observation methods, then you may think/_feel_ that you owe your informants a greater level of protection than a more utilitarian approach would require. (Cf. Hall et al, below). FWIW, these topics were explored fairly thoroughly in the development of both the 2002 and 2012 AoIR ethics guidelines. Some references from the latter that might be helpful: Hall, G. J, Frederick, D., & Johns, M.D. (2004). “NEED HELP ASAP!!!”: A Feminist Communitarian Approach to Online Research Ethics. In Mark D. Johns, Shing-Ling Sarina Chen, & G. Jon Hall (Eds.), Online social research: Methods, issues, and ethics, 239-252. New York: Peter Lang Hudson, J. M. & Bruckman, A. (2004). Go away: Participant objections to being studied and the ethics of chatroom research. Information Society, 20(2), 127-139. Markham, A. (2006). Method as ethic, ethic as method. Journal of Information Ethics, 15(2), 37-55. In my experience, a watershed example of working through this decision was presented by Janne Bromseth in her PhD work: Genre trouble and the body that mattered. Negotiations of gender, sexuality and identity in a Scandinavian mailing list community for lesbian and bisexual women. (Trondheim, Norway: 2007). In Janne's case, a central ethical question involved whether or not to anonymize individuals as well as the listserv - in the context of a relatively small national population in which identification of individual members would be relatively easy. In particular, even in highly secular-rational and sexually emancipated Scandinavia, in the early 2000s, lesbian and bisexual women (along with other persons who sexualities / identities / preferences fell outside of what has been helpfully pegged as heteronormativity) still experience(d) no little discrimination and all the negatives of such marginalization. Hence the critical importance of protecting the identities of listserv members. (This points to a further question: how sensitive / personal is the information affiliated with a given participant? In a craft group, in contrast with Janne's listserv, it would seems less sensitive and hence less demanding of protection. But, to use Paula's point, this is a balancing act that requires judgment as well.) As an example of the feminist / participant-observation approach, even after receiving permission from the listserv owners to use the listserv for research, Janne chose (felt ethically compelled) to go above and beyond the minimal requirements for protection of anonymity and confidentiality - so as to ask for permission to draw on the listerv exchanges (anonymized) from all members of the list. This was clearly a very risky decision - but it paid off handsomely, both ethically and in terms of the research itself. (This is also in another way one of the most interesting dissertations I've worked through: as the interactions unfolded, it becomes something of a detective novel (Scandinavian krimi) - and at points is a real page-turner. Not something to be said of every dissertation, for better and for worse.) To be sure, all of this can become further complicated, at least to some degree, by the various additional affordances and implications of social media - something that the Ethics Working Group is attempting to come to better grips with. Other members of the Working Group may want to add some comments along these lines. In all events, I hope these additional comments will be helpful. Again, many thanks to Paula for honing in on the central questions - and best of luck to you in your research. - charles On 05/04/2018 03:56, paula Todd wrote:
What have they asked you to do? Are they requiring that second level of anonymity? Ie. do not identify the group? Its location?
How many group members are there? Are there so few they will be easily identified if you name the group?
It is a balance act usually between what you agree not to reveal and what needs to be revealed to keep your work accurate and relevant ...
Best, PJT
On Apr 4, 2018, at 9:25 PM, Markus, Sandra <sm3291@tc.columbia.edu> wrote:
Hello.
I am a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University. My dissertation examines the practices of three crafting groups, which have an offline and online presence. I am interviewing members of the groups, who have requested anonymity.
So, if I am using a pseudonyms for the members, is it ethical to identify the actual group's name, or should I use a pseudonym for the groups' name as well?
Any advice and articles on this issue would be greatly appreciated.
Sandra Markus Teachers College _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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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> Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no