Hi all, Let me see if I can helpfully complicate this discussion. What we discovered as we developed the first set of guidelines for internet research - i.e., prior to the current popularity of blogs, etc. - nonetheless seems to hold here as well. On the one hand, in general, yes, there's plenty of good warrant for viewing blogs as analogous to print publication and thereby seek to use our established rules, practices, and law for print publication as the basis for how we approach material posted in a blog. (This is especially true for humanities-based folk rather than for the social science folk - i.e., the former tend to view online material more along the lines of this analogy than the latter, which makes perfect sense give the diverse disciplinary assumptions, methodologies, practices, etc., in play.) On the other hand, however, in a range of ethical approaches (especially the feminist / communitarian / deontological approaches favored in participant-observation methodologies, at least as we could document this) the role of an person's expectations - whether or not they are warranted by the technological realities - often take priority over other considerations. So, as I see it, the disagreement here is between two well-established modes of ethical reflection on these matters. It may be of further interest and relevance to note that there is also some evidence to suggestion that, especially in the U.S. context, the former approach is favored by men as a group, while the latter approach is more frequently taken up by women as a group (i.e., these are, of course, statistical generalizations based on observation, not essentialist bits, etc.). However that may be, there is also a very large gap here between U.S. approaches and those at work, say, in Scandinavia and Europe. The importance of protecting what is seen to be personal information and data is much higher on this side of the pond - doubly so in Denmark, for example. I'm familiar with at least one similar research project here in which my Danish colleague worried precisely about these issues - and decided against, pseudonymity in one case, because it seemed clear that there was no expectation of privacy. In a different case, however, where the expectations of privacy seem to be stronger - though unwarranted from a technological standpoint - the tendency is to lean in favor of pseudonyms and even stronger measures of privacy protection. All of which is to say - (a) these matters are frequently more complicated, multifaceted, and ethically ambiguous than they may seem at first glance - hence the need for informed and reflective ethical judgments, and (b) please wish your colleagues on the AoIR guidelines committee (as chaired by Elizabeth Buchanan) best of luck as we continue to work on revising the AoIR guidelines in order to update them in light of newer uses of the Web and the Internet. In particular, whether or not you may be participating in the upcoming pre-conference workshop on internet research ethics at AoIR this Wednesday, we hope to see many of you at our panel on research ethics on Thursday @ 11:40, where we will report on our efforts and seek your responses and suggestions. As I hope the above comments make clear, our efforts are very much driven by the view that we must start with the experience and insights of researchers, and, so to speak, work up towards whatever generalized claims that can be made, rather than work top-down from a given set of ethical norms, etc. Your contributions to this work is thus essential. See many of your soon, I hope - charles ess Institut for Informations- og Medievidenskab Helsingforsgade 14 8200 Århus N. Denmark mail: <imvce@hum.au.dk> tel: (+45) 8942 9250 Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23 On 10/17/10 3:31 AM, "Brabham, Daren C" <dbrabham@email.unc.edu> wrote:
I would even respectfully disagree about this line:
"Sometimes even when a blog is technically public, if it is about a very personal matter (like illness, or family) there is an expectation of privacy/anonymity even when the blog is publicly accessible. In those cases I could understand going with pseudonyms, but not with blogs about indie music."
The act of publication is to make public a set of ideas, and at that point it becomes an artifact--a text--game for analysis without the concern of human subject research ethics (in my opinion). Again, if the authors attempt to password-protect their work, that's an IRB-worthy issue, but otherwise, even if it's about a "personal matter," the act of publication is a public thing...thus no IRB needed.