I want to thank you all for your helpful information about online data validity. Since I'm analyzing morality in celebrity forum discussions, I've been pondering a lot about the issues of trustworthiness in the digital space. My material involves very hostile commenting (even death threats to particular celebrities). A lot of that data is now omitted from the internet - I think because it is illegal to be accessed in public. Interestingly the issue of data trustworthiness touches both research (research ethics, reseach credibility - Michael dealt with these two issues very thoroughly) and the actual participation online. Who can you trust? What is the criteria of trustworthiness? Maybe this sounds like a science fiction thing, but I think Rushing and Frentz (1995: 180, "Projecting the Shadow: The Cyborg Hero in American Film") have described this phenomenon of untrustworthiness very well by introducing the problem of shadow. The "shadow" is not the real 'self' but an outcome of technological proximity in which the part of us that is projected onto the other is rejected. One may ask, where do we situate our trust in digital environments? One may also ask where do we situate our trust when internet research is concerned - in the mercurial digital space itself or in a researcher and her description? Maria