there are no absolute generalizations in terms of ethics - I would say - but there ARE things like accountability to the community and people that you are writing about and with - and this determines what ethical behaviour you pursue
I am glad to see Radhika mention "accountability to the community" as a key variable in making this kind of ethical decision. Do community standards, policies, practices, and feelings matter in this research decision? What we have heard from various AoIR researchers (e.g., Bruckman, Ess) is that communities or community members often have an expectation of privacy, even when postings are public. Should researchers honor such expectations -- and, thus, probably lean toward seeing formal informed consent? My sense is that generally, yes, they should -- and not only in the interest of avoiding harm to the participants as a collective but also in the interest of avoiding community backlash against researchers. What Heidi McKee and I have seen from our own research on Internet researchers -- and yes, we regard that as human subjects research! -- is that most researchers we've interviewed, and certainly most ethnographers, are careful to respect community standards and beliefs because *not* doing so potentially impairs future research. Harm to the researcher (and to future research) is also, I would argue, a part of the ethical decision here. Jim Porter ------------------------------- James E. Porter Co-Director, WIDE Research Center Writing in Digital Environments Olds Hall 7 Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824 porterj8@msu.edu office: 517.353.7258 fax: 517.353.9162 http://wide.msu.edu/ -----------------------------------------