Maria - this dilemma persists for every beginning phd project starting with email lists (see my book from 2004 on Cyberselves: Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian women as an example from another generation) My 2 cents - copyright - If its public - they dont have a law suit case - besides you also got actual email permissions from them as well. Ethics - if its sensitive material - dont reveal their real of youtube account names? share your dissertation with them? - but let's see what others have to say:) Finish your project - then worry about this as you get nearer to publication. r On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 7:20 AM, Maria Eronen <m85327@student.uwasa.fi>wrote:
Dear all,
I am Maria, a PhD student from Finland and currently working with my thesis concerning how celebrity gossip leads to moral discussion on the Internet. I think I have some problems with research ethics. My research material consists of publicly available discussions from YouTube, various online newspapers and celebrity-related forums. Because I'm conducting linguistic analysis, it is reasonable to cite comments from those online discussions.
One central topic I am focusing on is autobiographical moralizing (for example, discussion participants compare violence involving celebrities with their own-life experiences of violence, such as telling how their partner once hit them). This kind of material is what I categorize as sensitive and see it better not to refer to pseudonyms or usernames. I make it clear in my work that in some cases I see it better to stress privacy protection over copyright. However, I will mention the forum, where the comments come from, as a source (such as YouTube). I have personally contacted every one whose comments I see as sensitive. I want to use even senstive comments because they are valuable material from the point of view of the research. No one of them whom I contacted has said no. But of course, I'm not even sure whether they have seen the posts I sent to them (actually one replied to me and just wanted to know more about the study).
In order to protect myself, I have not copied the whole comments, but left some parts of them out of the publication. The problem is now that by letting them know such a research they might see their posts in the dissertation and start a law case (because I don't authorize their words). The comments I cite without referring to the users as authors do not seem as pieces of creative art, but they are typical examples of online discussion.
However, I'm a bit concerned because the posters whom I cite without permission, are American. The work itself will be published in Finland.
Do you think this kind of privacy protection is a good reason to leave the usernames out? Am I too concerned or could this lead to serious consequences? Has anyone had similar experiences?
I would be very thankful if you had time to help me,
all the best, Maria Eronen
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