"Jenny Stromer-Galley" <jstromer@asc.upenn.edu> wrote:
"Glaser considers this technique [of posing as curious and naive visitors to a white supremacist chat room] ethical because participants were contacted in a public forum, weren't coerced, addressed common topics of conversation in their chat rooms, and were not personally identified by the researchers.
I know AoIR has worked on ethics guidelines. What do you think about Glaser's practices?
Mary Gray responded:
if i choose groups such as rape survivors or parents grieving the loss of their children, it changes the valence of things...
...but, that's the rub of ethics isn't it? ethics challenge us to think about our systems of 'right and wrong' and do the 'right thing'...
I have argued before that hate groups and other 'anti-social' online groups problematize the ethics questions, particularly inasmuch as one believes that subjects have a right to know that they are being research subjects. I resolve this dilemma by thinking not in terms of standardized protocols for what constitues ethical research practice, but in terms of whether research serves "the greater good." It is very difficult to explain how deceiving rape survivors and greiving parents is important to bettering the human condition. Is the knowledge gain really going to outweigh potential damage done to those studied? On the other hand, it's much easier to argue that deceiving people whose aim is to cause suffering for others (as is the case with hate groups or pedophiles) can be justified if that deception results in knowledge that could lessen that suffering. Personally, I am grateful that there are people out there, most of whom are not academics, who are infiltrating hate groups under false pretenses and often at risk to their own life in order to educate the rest of us about what they are up to (plug for the southern poverty law center goes here). That is how I see the ethical issues here. Whether a university review board would back me up on this is another issue. The scholars I've known who did this kind of work figured they were doing it on their own and didn't expect the university to stand by them with legal support if they needed it. ________________________________________________________ Nancy Baym http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym Communication Studies, University of Kansas 102 Bailey, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org