At 09:11 PM 5/9/2004 -0500, you wrote:
I've always let the test be that I, as researcher, am out in the open in the plain view of the subject. If they are speaking loudly enough that I can hear without any special equipment, or effort, I treat the conversation as public talk freely available for analysis (and recording). In the case of the cell phone, I am not "tapping" the phone call illegally cause I can't hear the other side of the conversation.
but you'd be amazed at how shocked they would be if they then saw their words quoted in a public(ation) text. What is invaded is the Individual's *sense* of privacy - whatever the medium used. It is in the recording and reproducing of things said in contexts that they cannot themselves control that leads to questions of ethics in such instances. So who has the power to reproduce everyday conversations and place in con(texts) where they get generalized and used for policy and other forms of (mis) representation? I doubt that any "ethics" document officially produced in Academic or Corporate circles (not that the two are mutually exclusive) would ever be complete in the consideration of what it means to have ethical responsibility towards the groups of people that the research supposedly represents and/or describes. just my 2 cents. r http://www.cyberdiva.org blogs: http://www.cyberdiva.org/cyberdiv/october research and teaching: http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik info on forthcoming book: http://www.altamirapress.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0759106924