Gilbert " journalists, politicians, preachers, bloggers," are NOT social scientific researchers responsible to that institutionalized ethic. They don't promise their universities (and the government and society in general) to protect human subjects. You are right, they can do anything they darn well please (within the confines of the ethics of their genre). We cannot. We promise to do better. And when we don't, we compromise the ability of future researchers to get willing subjects. We live and work in the speech act game called "social science research." It is bound by constraints that don't exit in some other language games. On Sep 3, 2007, at 1:56 PM, Gilbert B. Rodman wrote:
Sure, Ed ... but that doesn't get at Lois' question about what (if anything) is *uniquely* dangerous about researchers in this regard. The very same processes of interpreting, labeling, repackaging, and redistributing, after all, are routinely used by journalists, politicians, preachers, bloggers, and then some. And, given the large discrepancies in audience size between, say, CNN and _New media and society_, any legitimate fears of possible "repackaging" are probably better directed at the "repackagers" who reach tens of millions of people (on a bad day), rather than the ones who reach hundreds (on a good one).
ard Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D. Associate Professor, Multimedia Program and Department of Communication Co-Director, New Media Center 1501 W. Bradley Bradley University Peoria IL 61625 309-677-2378 <http://slane.bradley.edu/com/faculty/lamoureux/website2/index.html> <http://gcc.bradley.edu/mm/> AIM/IM & skype: dredleelam Second Life: Professor Beliveau