Hi - About a year ago, I polled list members about this and received great answers, most of which are included in the ethics guideline Mark Johns pointed to. HOWEVER, we found that our IRB here at CU was not very well educated on online communication and interaction, so I would add two things: (1) be very explicit in describing what the data are, and use layperson's language. (2) work from your institutions PI Handbook/Guidelines for "exempt" research. Publicly available discourse/public discourse is "exempt" (for example, rhetoricians who study political speeches don't have to change the name of the politicians they are studying). We were able to get exempt approval (which usually does not require informed consent and may not require confidentiality) by making clear that we were analyzing publicly available *texts.* Good luck - mj ----------------------------------------------------------------- Michele H. Jackson | jackson@colorado.edu Associate Professor | http://comm.colorado.edu/jackson Department of Communication | v:303-492-8139 University of Colorado | f:303-492-8411 Boulder, CO 80309-0270 | ----------------------------------------------------------------- Graduate Study in Group Interaction at CU. see http://comm.colorado.edu/whitec/groupinteraction Associate Editor, Women's Studies in Communication. see http://www.orwac.org/