Stephanie: I think that this could be a form of mixed methods research. Descriptive data is being collected that is clearly measurable and observable. The students who do not get Facebook pages could be interpreted as a control group. At the very least it is a real time simulation exercise. Having said that, I used to work for a few ad agencies and radio stations before becoming a national producer and an adjunct professor and we were taught to look at the data but to always keep in mind that some people lie about their personal data. I noticed this trend when I did my doctoral research and exhibit A of this is the current US election where people have not been consistently telling the truth when polled and the data has the media and some researchers perplexed. Data mining is a huge culprit here. More people are being to realize that "someone" or "some entity" is keeping tabs on them so human being the emotional and rational creatures that we are have decided to disrupt everything. I said all that I have said to say there are ethical issues on both sides now because of convergence technologies that previously did not exist. I think that you have taken great care to avoid such a thing and you are not profiting financially. The only question left is this: will anyone be harmed? It is remotely foreseeable that the data mining of the company may be impacted. My question would be is it ethical for them to gather data on your students that will invariably be used for advertising and potentially sold to others for profit. I think you may actually be doing a critical service in exploring this phenomenon. I know that you are a filmmaker like me and this would be a great web documentary. At the end of the day I think you are fine ethically. Dr. Chris A. Heidelberg Loyola College Adjunct Professor -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Stephanie Tuszynski Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 7:18 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] question about use of Facebook in classroom Hello all- I'm teaching an "intro to advertising" class this fall and I was considering using Facebook in class to talk about targeted ads. A few weeks ago I was reading a discussion about the rather unpleasant weight loss ads that seem to pop up to anyone identifying as female on FB and I switched my profile to have an unspecified gender and made my age something like 99 years old to see what happened. What I want to do is have the students make notes for a couple weeks on what ads they were getting on FB and then have them replicate the same thing - change gender and age status and see what happens for the next couple weeks, then we'll compare the data in class to talk about what kinds of ads are targeted to who, etc. I am NOT requiring students to get a FB account for the class. Those who don't have one would collect the information provided by those who do and do some analysis. Also this is not research, it's a course exercise, so HSRB isn't a factor. But still, I wanted to run this concept by the people who deal with these kinds of exercises and have spent more time thinking about the ethics of this kind of thing than I or any of my colleagues. Does this sound acceptable, from an ethical standpoint? Dr. Stephanie Tuszynski Assistant Professor of Communication Bethany College _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/