When you're analyzing texts, you're not analyzing humans, so IRB concerns about the ethics of research on human subjects does not apply. At all. Tell your IRB they betta check themselves. Now, if you 1) plan on doing interviews with the blog authors, or 2) you're analyzing blogs that only you and a few others have access to (via a password you've been granted by the blog authors), then I think IRB matters in this case. But otherwise, a text is a text is a text. Public blogs are public artifacts for analysis. If I were your master's student, I'd pursue this research without IRB's blessing. I'm generally irked by the way IRB interferes in the (already ridiculously) slow pace of Internet research, and this case sounds absurd. You're not injecting these blogs with syphilis, after all. My two cents, db --- Daren C. Brabham, Ph.D. Assistant Professor School of Journalism & Mass Communication University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Carroll Hall, CB 3365 Chapel Hill, NC 27599 (919) 962-0676 (office) (801) 633-4796 (cell) daren.brabham@unc.edu www.darenbrabham.com