It seems to me that the issue is whether such online forms of expression are considered public or private.
Ildiko brought this up and yes, it has been discussed on air-l before, but I think there's plenty of room for more discussion so I'll pick up on the thread. The following thoughts came up at the SSRC ITIC Summer Institute about a month ago. Yes, people in some of these online public discussion groups may realize that they are in a public forum where anyone can stop by and read their comments. Some people who do research on such publicly accessible material claim that it is no different than analyzing other publicly available material (e.g. comments someone might make in a speech on a street corner) so they claim that there is no need to ask for user consent or that there is little to be concerned about even when asking for consent. But there is a difference. The comments posted in an online forum usually have some identifying information attached to them (say, an email address or a name). And that email address or name also shows up in all sorts of other locations online (e.g. other discussion groups, Web sites, etc.). When you make a public comment in a physical public square not only is your name not necessarily scribbled on your forehead - although your face is there - but few of the people who are present on the square at that moment will come and follow you to see where you go after you made that comment, what other comment you may make somewhere else, where you may show up two days later, etc. Using social network analysis and some identifying information about a participant in an online forum, it is possible to track their comments through time and across online spaces potentially finding out much much more about a user than what they said in one particular online forum. It seems that via such aggregation, we know much more about the person than any observer on the public square in physical space would. And this is something that I think a lot of users are not at all aware of. And it seems this makes commenting in a public forum online different from making a comment in public offline which may then have implications for how researchers should approach human subjects in such a situation. Any thoughts? Eszter PS. SSRC ITIC = Social Science Research Council Program on Information Technology, International Cooperation and Global Security http://www.ssrc.org/programs/itic/ --- Eszter's List: http://www.eszter.com/elist My Weblog: http://www.esztersblog.com __________________________________________________________________ Your favorite stores, helpful shopping tools and great gift ideas. Experience the convenience of buying online with Shop@Netscape! http://shopnow.netscape.com/ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/