My IRB suggests (at least so far) not to bother attempting to get HSRB for autoethnographies. I agree Delia that this discussion is no different from RL. On Mar 7, 2008, at 7:09 PM, dddumitr@ucalgary.ca wrote:
Together with a colleague of mine, we are doing an autoethnographic research project in SL. Ethics has been a major issue since the very beginning. We are not doing research of other people/avatars, but our own understanding of things and our reflexive processes are inevitably formed in an interactional manner. We have asked for the opinion of the ethics committee in our department/school, and they have argued that since this is autoethnographic, we actually need ethics applications in relation to each other (since our project is collaborative and we share our personal experiences).
In my mind, the discussion about ethics in SL is no different from ethics in RL. For instance, would you ask for consent if you do an observation in a public place? Going to public places in SL (even if you require an account to come in) - how is it substantially different in ethical terms than doing an observation in RL? I think these issues are hard to answer and require a case-by-case decision. In environments such as SL, doing any type of research that takes as its subject other avatars and their behavior, requires ethics procedures, in my view. I feel ambivalent however in arguing that you need to ask for permission if you do a content analysis of the posters in SL, or of blog posts. Would you ask for permission if you want to do research on someone's personal correspondence or diary, but would you do the same if that correspondence would be published in a book? On the other side, do bloggers have an expectation that their stuff is 'public' (some do, some may not - so what do you do in such cases?).