Dear AoIR-ists, I apologize for the delay in responding to some of the important questions raised by my posting. This was partly a matter of travel schedules, etc. - and also the mysterious fact (not that I'm paranoid) that my initial sendings of these notes, both to the list and then to Jeremy, appear instead to have hastened off into the ether... Trying one more time - starting with Radhika's post:
At 07:14 PM 11/28/2004 +0100, you wrote:
Yener and Krishnamoorthy, both associate professors of computer science, wrote that their research would involve writing a program for "silently listening" to an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel and "logging all the messages".
but anyone who has used IRC or MUDS and MOOs know that all activity is always logged in variety of coded and more text based formats - this is nothing really new.
if anyone thinks they are NOT being watched - well - that's naivette.
r Dear Radhika et al (warning - first of two longish notes)
It may be naivete - but from ethical and legal perspectives, that's not the primary point, IMHO. You will not be surprised to hear that a first issue for me here is the ethical one - one we've been looking at for quite some time as part of trying to put the ethical guidelines together and keep them up to date: what rights, if any, to informed consent / privacy / confidentiality / anonymity, etc., may people expect in online environments - and not just generally (which I think your points primarily address?), but specifically from those who research them? In other words, I'm wondering if the researchers being paid for their hard word, as associate professors of computer science, have considered their professional ethics obligations first of all, and then secondly, the sorts of questions we seek to raise in the AoIR ethical guidelines? TONE: this is not sarcastic or ironic. Having read a lot of researchers' reflections on these themes, and having had the privilege of talking with several more in depth about some of the knottier problems involved - I'm simply and genuinely curious as to what ethical considerations the researchers themselves might have undertaken before agreeing to do this sort of work. Then I'd be curious to know how they would justify this sort of work, given the professional ethics guidelines available, e.g., from the ACM, etc., and/or AoIR. I'm not saying it couldn't be done - but I'd be curious to see if and how it was done. As to the issue of such rights: Opinions vary, of course, depending in some measure on discipline and country. But one of the points to be made is that _if_ people expect privacy - whether or not that expectation is necessarily justified - there may be an ethical duty, all other things being equal, to respect that expectation. (I hope Amy Bruckman and Jim Hudson don't mind my dragging them into this - but their recent article on how people in chatrooms respond to the presence of researchers is especially enlightening in this regard.) Moreover, I could go on for quite some time about the cultural differences at work here - but the brief point is that there is a much greater expectation (if not always reality) in European and Scandinavian countries than in the States that the state and its laws are to protect online privacy. China and several of the more authoritarian Asian states, of course, take a different view. My point here - one that Radhika can no doubt express far more clearly and powerfully than I - is that this spectrum of perspectives on attitudes, laws, codes, and practices regarding privacy are helpful background in thinking through whatever "we" might think (e.g., as researchers in the U.S., etc.) Finally, it's also the case that any number of researchers - both in the U.S. and abroad - have written with great sensitivity and insight regarding their ethical struggles with such such issues - and deciding, in many cases, to do _more_ to protect their subjects' privacy, confidentiality, etc. than what was required by professional ethics codes, etc. Again, it would be interesting to hear from the researchers undertaking this work their own reflections - and their responses to the sometimes quite different views regarding privacy, anonymity, etc., expressed by some of their colleagues, both within and beyond the borders of the U.S. I have happily received money from the NSF, and hope to do so again in the future. But I forwarded the note regarding CIA and NSF funding of CMC projects involving surveillance of people online because I thought it touched precisely on these interesting aspects of internet research ethics. cheers, Charles Ess Fall '04: Fulbright Senior Scholar Universität Trier Fachbereich II Fakultäten der Medienwissenschaft, Sinologie Universitätsring 15 54296 Trier (Germany) Office phone: (49) (0)651-201-3744 Sekretariat: (49) (0)651-201-3203 Fax: (49) (0)651-201-3741 Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23