A master's student I am working with was told by the Human Subjects Committee that in doing a textual analysis of indie music blogs that she could not list the name of the blog but had to use pseudonyms. Has any heard of this before? They are public sites after all and their content is easily searchable. If you were coding newspapers you wouldn't need to identify them as newspaper A or B. I think it is crazy, but wanted to hear what you think.
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
I wonder if the student had called them 'online publications' there would be a completely different reaction. Because grandma posting about her foot calluses and Brooklyn Vegan, while both could be entitled 'blogs', are completely entirely different. IRB hasn't been updated that the word 'blog' in an of itself does not mean human subject specific content. On Oct 16, 2010, at 4:44 PM, Johnson, Thomas J wrote:
A master's student I am working with was told by the Human Subjects Committee that in doing a textual analysis of indie music blogs that she could not list the name of the blog but had to use pseudonyms. Has any heard of this before? They are public sites after all and their content is easily searchable. If you were coding newspapers you wouldn't need to identify them as newspaper A or B. I think it is crazy, but wanted to hear what you think. _______________________________________________ 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
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I would call them "online publications" and find similar research that analyzes news/political blogs as online news publications to present to the IRB as examples of research dealing with similar material. With my research, I have found that IRBs sometimes just know very little about online research, so they often need examples and models of other similar research to help justify your approach. Your student might also point out the very public news aspect of these blogs-- they are about the public issue of indie music, and not about a more personal subject matter. Sometimes even when a blog is technically public, if it is about a very personal matter (like illness, or family) there is an expectation of privacy/anonymity even when the blog is publicly accessible. In those cases I could understand going with pseudonyms, but not with blogs about indie music. Hope that helps! -Wendy Wendy M. Christensen, Ph.D. Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bowdoin College wchriste@bowdoin.edu On Oct 16, 2010, at 8:56 PM, live <human.factor.one@gmail.com> wrote:
I wonder if the student had called them 'online publications' there would be a completely different reaction. Because grandma posting about her foot calluses and Brooklyn Vegan, while both could be entitled 'blogs', are completely entirely different. IRB hasn't been updated that the word 'blog' in an of itself does not mean human subject specific content.
On Oct 16, 2010, at 4:44 PM, Johnson, Thomas J wrote:
A master's student I am working with was told by the Human Subjects Committee that in doing a textual analysis of indie music blogs that she could not list the name of the blog but had to use pseudonyms. Has any heard of this before? They are public sites after all and their content is easily searchable. If you were coding newspapers you wouldn't need to identify them as newspaper A or B. I think it is crazy, but wanted to hear what you think. _______________________________________________ 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
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I would even respectfully disagree about this line: "Sometimes even when a blog is technically public, if it is about a very personal matter (like illness, or family) there is an expectation of privacy/anonymity even when the blog is publicly accessible. In those cases I could understand going with pseudonyms, but not with blogs about indie music." The act of publication is to make public a set of ideas, and at that point it becomes an artifact--a text--game for analysis without the concern of human subject research ethics (in my opinion). Again, if the authors attempt to password-protect their work, that's an IRB-worthy issue, but otherwise, even if it's about a "personal matter," the act of publication is a public thing...thus no IRB needed. 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
Hi all, Let me see if I can helpfully complicate this discussion. What we discovered as we developed the first set of guidelines for internet research - i.e., prior to the current popularity of blogs, etc. - nonetheless seems to hold here as well. On the one hand, in general, yes, there's plenty of good warrant for viewing blogs as analogous to print publication and thereby seek to use our established rules, practices, and law for print publication as the basis for how we approach material posted in a blog. (This is especially true for humanities-based folk rather than for the social science folk - i.e., the former tend to view online material more along the lines of this analogy than the latter, which makes perfect sense give the diverse disciplinary assumptions, methodologies, practices, etc., in play.) On the other hand, however, in a range of ethical approaches (especially the feminist / communitarian / deontological approaches favored in participant-observation methodologies, at least as we could document this) the role of an person's expectations - whether or not they are warranted by the technological realities - often take priority over other considerations. So, as I see it, the disagreement here is between two well-established modes of ethical reflection on these matters. It may be of further interest and relevance to note that there is also some evidence to suggestion that, especially in the U.S. context, the former approach is favored by men as a group, while the latter approach is more frequently taken up by women as a group (i.e., these are, of course, statistical generalizations based on observation, not essentialist bits, etc.). However that may be, there is also a very large gap here between U.S. approaches and those at work, say, in Scandinavia and Europe. The importance of protecting what is seen to be personal information and data is much higher on this side of the pond - doubly so in Denmark, for example. I'm familiar with at least one similar research project here in which my Danish colleague worried precisely about these issues - and decided against, pseudonymity in one case, because it seemed clear that there was no expectation of privacy. In a different case, however, where the expectations of privacy seem to be stronger - though unwarranted from a technological standpoint - the tendency is to lean in favor of pseudonyms and even stronger measures of privacy protection. All of which is to say - (a) these matters are frequently more complicated, multifaceted, and ethically ambiguous than they may seem at first glance - hence the need for informed and reflective ethical judgments, and (b) please wish your colleagues on the AoIR guidelines committee (as chaired by Elizabeth Buchanan) best of luck as we continue to work on revising the AoIR guidelines in order to update them in light of newer uses of the Web and the Internet. In particular, whether or not you may be participating in the upcoming pre-conference workshop on internet research ethics at AoIR this Wednesday, we hope to see many of you at our panel on research ethics on Thursday @ 11:40, where we will report on our efforts and seek your responses and suggestions. As I hope the above comments make clear, our efforts are very much driven by the view that we must start with the experience and insights of researchers, and, so to speak, work up towards whatever generalized claims that can be made, rather than work top-down from a given set of ethical norms, etc. Your contributions to this work is thus essential. See many of your soon, I hope - charles ess Institut for Informations- og Medievidenskab Helsingforsgade 14 8200 Århus N. Denmark mail: <imvce@hum.au.dk> tel: (+45) 8942 9250 Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23 On 10/17/10 3:31 AM, "Brabham, Daren C" <dbrabham@email.unc.edu> wrote:
I would even respectfully disagree about this line:
"Sometimes even when a blog is technically public, if it is about a very personal matter (like illness, or family) there is an expectation of privacy/anonymity even when the blog is publicly accessible. In those cases I could understand going with pseudonyms, but not with blogs about indie music."
The act of publication is to make public a set of ideas, and at that point it becomes an artifact--a text--game for analysis without the concern of human subject research ethics (in my opinion). Again, if the authors attempt to password-protect their work, that's an IRB-worthy issue, but otherwise, even if it's about a "personal matter," the act of publication is a public thing...thus no IRB needed.
Thanks to Charles for complicating things :). I think part of the issue here is a disconnect between ethical protections of the source of the material studied and whether submitting to an IRB is sensible or practical. Part of the idea behind an IRB is that human subjects are human subjects and an oncologist, a psychologist, and a pharmacologist sitting on the committee should be able to tell whether there is significant risk of harm to the subjects--or, as in this case, whether there are human subjects at all. Frankly, as someone who has studied blog content without passing my protocols through the IRB, I strongly suspect that they are not prepared to make that call. There is certainly evidence that bloggers expect scholarly attention about as much as they expect the Spanish Inquisition. Fernanda Viégas might be worth looking at on this: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue3/viegas.html though I'm sure there is other work on the topic out there as well. That said, journalists also don't expect scholarly attention, nor do tourists walking through Times Square. That lack of expectation does not mean that they should remain unstudied. And at some point I think we have to say that there are competing values in research, and it is harmful to scholarship--and by extension to humanity--to require *everything* to be exposed to prior review by peers. So the question is where to draw the line. I generally draw it such that utterances in public should reasonably be open to interpretation by members of the public, including scholars. Certainly, there are risks, but there are always risks where communication is involved. Whether these risks rise to the level that we should institutionalize protections is the question. I am less sanguine about this line in particular cases: say, studies of blogging about self-harm, or by prison inmates, or similar groups. In other words, I don't think there is a clear line. But the lack of clarity also--I think--does not automatically necessitate submission to a human subjects board. Best, Alex -- -- // // This email is // [x] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded, but I certainly don't expect it to be used as primary material in any sort of research ;) // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net //
Complicated though this case may be from an ethical standpoint, since it involves an IRB and is in the U.S., the IRB must adhere to federal guiddlines for human subjects research as expressed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The "decision tree" HHS provides at http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/decisioncharts.htm I think makes it pretty clear that IRB approval is not required. The two key points in the decision tree are whether the research involves intervention or interaction with human subjects (my assumption, which may be incorrect, is that the blogging in question is going on without contact from the researcher) and whether the information is private (my assumption, which may be incorrect, is that the blog is publicly available). In the event my assumptions are correct, the decision tree leads to the conclusion that "the research is not research involving human subjects." In other words, it is research that should not be subject to IRB review.The researcher's ethics may lead to different conclusions, but from what I can tell, unless something else is going on (communication with the bloggers, comments by the research on posts, or some other means of interacting with the bloggers) the IRB ought not be involved if it is following federal guidelines. Steve On Oct 17, 2010, at 12:57 AM, Alex Halavais wrote:
Thanks to Charles for complicating things :).
I think part of the issue here is a disconnect between ethical protections of the source of the material studied and whether submitting to an IRB is sensible or practical. Part of the idea behind an IRB is that human subjects are human subjects and an oncologist, a psychologist, and a pharmacologist sitting on the committee should be able to tell whether there is significant risk of harm to the subjects--or, as in this case, whether there are human subjects at all. Frankly, as someone who has studied blog content without passing my protocols through the IRB, I strongly suspect that they are not prepared to make that call.
There is certainly evidence that bloggers expect scholarly attention about as much as they expect the Spanish Inquisition. Fernanda Viégas might be worth looking at on this:
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue3/viegas.html
though I'm sure there is other work on the topic out there as well.
That said, journalists also don't expect scholarly attention, nor do tourists walking through Times Square. That lack of expectation does not mean that they should remain unstudied. And at some point I think we have to say that there are competing values in research, and it is harmful to scholarship--and by extension to humanity--to require *everything* to be exposed to prior review by peers. So the question is where to draw the line. I generally draw it such that utterances in public should reasonably be open to interpretation by members of the public, including scholars. Certainly, there are risks, but there are always risks where communication is involved. Whether these risks rise to the level that we should institutionalize protections is the question.
I am less sanguine about this line in particular cases: say, studies of blogging about self-harm, or by prison inmates, or similar groups. In other words, I don't think there is a clear line. But the lack of clarity also--I think--does not automatically necessitate submission to a human subjects board.
Best,
Alex
-- -- // // This email is // [x] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded, but I certainly don't expect it to be used as primary material in any sort of research ;) // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // _______________________________________________ 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
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And to complicate _this_ a bit more, Elizabeth Buchanan, Montana Miller, John Palfry, and I recently presented to the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP) on "The Internet in Human Subjects Research", highlighting how the current guidance by OHRP has considerable gaps wrt internet based research. Details here: http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/sachrp/mtgings/mtg07-10/mtg07-10.html http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/07/20/presentation-research-ethics-in-the-2-0-... For those at IR11, while it's likely too late to register for the pre-conference workshop on "Ethics and Internet Research Commons: Building a sustainable future", we are also holding a roundtable on "Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Research Center, and Commons" on Thursday at 11:40am-12:40pm. Please join us! -michael. -- Michael Zimmer, PhD Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies Director, BS in Information Science & Technology Program Associate, Center for Information Policy Research University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee e: zimmerm@uwm.edu w: www.michaelzimmer.org On Oct 17, 2010, at 7:27 AM, Steve Jones wrote:
Complicated though this case may be from an ethical standpoint, since it involves an IRB and is in the U.S., the IRB must adhere to federal guiddlines for human subjects research as expressed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The "decision tree" HHS provides at http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/decisioncharts.htm I think makes it pretty clear that IRB approval is not required. The two key points in the decision tree are whether the research involves intervention or interaction with human subjects (my assumption, which may be incorrect, is that the blogging in question is going on without contact from the researcher) and whether the information is private (my assumption, which may be incorrect, is that the blog is publicly available). In the event my assumptions are correct, the decision tree leads to the conclusion that "the research is not research involving human subjects." In other words, it is research that should not be subject to IRB review.The researcher's ethics may lead to different conclusions, but from what I can tell, unless something else is going on (communication with the bloggers, comments by the research on posts, or some other means of interacting with the bloggers) the IRB ought not be involved if it is following federal guidelines.
Steve
On Oct 17, 2010, at 12:57 AM, Alex Halavais wrote:
Thanks to Charles for complicating things :).
I think part of the issue here is a disconnect between ethical protections of the source of the material studied and whether submitting to an IRB is sensible or practical. Part of the idea behind an IRB is that human subjects are human subjects and an oncologist, a psychologist, and a pharmacologist sitting on the committee should be able to tell whether there is significant risk of harm to the subjects--or, as in this case, whether there are human subjects at all. Frankly, as someone who has studied blog content without passing my protocols through the IRB, I strongly suspect that they are not prepared to make that call.
There is certainly evidence that bloggers expect scholarly attention about as much as they expect the Spanish Inquisition. Fernanda Viégas might be worth looking at on this:
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue3/viegas.html
though I'm sure there is other work on the topic out there as well.
That said, journalists also don't expect scholarly attention, nor do tourists walking through Times Square. That lack of expectation does not mean that they should remain unstudied. And at some point I think we have to say that there are competing values in research, and it is harmful to scholarship--and by extension to humanity--to require *everything* to be exposed to prior review by peers. So the question is where to draw the line. I generally draw it such that utterances in public should reasonably be open to interpretation by members of the public, including scholars. Certainly, there are risks, but there are always risks where communication is involved. Whether these risks rise to the level that we should institutionalize protections is the question.
I am less sanguine about this line in particular cases: say, studies of blogging about self-harm, or by prison inmates, or similar groups. In other words, I don't think there is a clear line. But the lack of clarity also--I think--does not automatically necessitate submission to a human subjects board.
Best,
Alex
-- -- // // This email is // [x] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded, but I certainly don't expect it to be used as primary material in any sort of research ;) // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // _______________________________________________ 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
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Michael: thank you very much for sharing these links and materials. Very interesting indeed! Re Thomas Johnson: If I understand correctly, the original question is about a practically useless (and time consuming) request by a Human Subjects Committee. The Committee apparently does not understand the power of search engines. It simply makes no sense to use pseudonyms, if accessible material is quoted literally. We had a related case when I was a member of a faculty e-learning commission at the University of Zurich. A professor wrote an article in the university newsletter, in which she was trying to show that use of electronic media leads to a deterioration of writing style, particularly with students. To that end she used several examples from online forums, including a forum almost exclusively used by University of Zurich students. She used pseudonyms for the posters she quoted, but one student in particular could later be identified by anyone who used her lengthy literal quote in a search. Best --u At 8:12 Uhr -0500 17.10.2010, Michael Zimmer wrote:
And to complicate _this_ a bit more, Elizabeth Buchanan, Montana Miller, John Palfry, and I recently presented to the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP) on "The Internet in Human Subjects Research", highlighting how the current guidance by OHRP has considerable gaps wrt internet based research.
Details here: http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/sachrp/mtgings/mtg07-10/mtg07-10.html http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/07/20/presentation-research-ethics-in-the-2-0-...
For those at IR11, while it's likely too late to register for the pre-conference workshop on "Ethics and Internet Research Commons: Building a sustainable future", we are also holding a roundtable on "Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Research Center, and Commons" on Thursday at 11:40am-12:40pm.
Please join us!
-michael.
-- Ulf-Dietrich Reips, Ph.D. Ikerbasque Research Professor Departamento de Psicología Universidad de Deusto Apartado 1, 48080 Bilbao, España Secretary & Fax: +34 944 139 085 http://iscience.deusto.es/
Dear colleague: I am a researcher in the iScience Group at Universidad de Deusto, Spain. We are currently conducting a study that might be of interest to you. Please use the following link to participate: http://wextor.org:8080/Sp1R3niess/PI_v11_egkx/index.html?so=aoir Please also consider posting this link on your Facebook page or on Twitter etc. Thank you for your consideration, iScience Research Team -- Ulf-Dietrich Reips, Ph.D., habil. Ikerbasque Research Professor Departamento de Psicología Universidad de Deusto Apartado 1, 48080 Bilbao, España Tel. & Fax: +34 944 139 085 http://iscience.deusto.es/
Hi. Could you be a little bit more clear about what the study is about? Thanks! @SharonG On Oct 29, 2010, at 3:09 AM, Ulf-Dietrich Reips wrote:
Dear colleague:
I am a researcher in the iScience Group at Universidad de Deusto, Spain. We are currently conducting a study that might be of interest to you. Please use the following link to participate:
http://wextor.org:8080/Sp1R3niess/PI_v11_egkx/index.html?so=aoir
Please also consider posting this link on your Facebook page or on Twitter etc.
Thank you for your consideration, iScience Research Team
-- Ulf-Dietrich Reips, Ph.D., habil. Ikerbasque Research Professor Departamento de Psicología Universidad de Deusto Apartado 1, 48080 Bilbao, España
Tel. & Fax: +34 944 139 085 http://iscience.deusto.es/
Hi @SharonG: sure... we are developing a personality test for use on the Internet. We are at the first stage - that is the one concerned with weeding out items (statements) that are less useful than others. Because we will need about 5000 participants, we need all the help we can get. Please let me know if you have any more questions, I'll be happy to answer them off-list. Best --u At 11:46 Uhr -0700 29.10.2010, live wrote:
Hi. Could you be a little bit more clear about what the study is about?
Thanks! @SharonG
On Oct 29, 2010, at 3:09 AM, Ulf-Dietrich Reips wrote:
Dear colleague:
I am a researcher in the iScience Group at Universidad de Deusto, Spain. We are currently conducting a study that might be of interest to you. Please use the following link to participate:
http://wextor.org:8080/Sp1R3niess/PI_v11_egkx/index.html?so=aoir
Please also consider posting this link on your Facebook page or on Twitter etc.
Thank you for your consideration, iScience Research Team
-- Ulf-Dietrich Reips, Ph.D., habil. Ikerbasque Research Professor Departamento de Psicología Universidad de Deusto Apartado 1, 48080 Bilbao, España
Tel. & Fax: +34 944 139 085 http://iscience.deusto.es/
Prof. Johnson shared with me that this was a multipart study with the second part being ethnographic interviews. As it was submitted to the irb as one study, and each part was not separate, I think it is easy to see how the irb could think there were privacy issues created between the published article and the private interviewee. I could see this too. For this to be documentary research to be treated as documentary research, the two must be kept separate. Research on the documents, should not allow inference to research on the people beyond what the documents say about the people as that is published knowledge, unless of course one is doing oral history, then the documents and people can be intertwined apparently. this comment is u.s. centric. -j
Mostly Daren is right, but.... in the U.S. we have the classes of 'protected individuals' for which it doesn't necessarily matter if they published it, because as a 'protected individual' they may not have been publishing it even if they did. The classes of protected are generally as best as i am aware(and there are likely others): children/minors, people undergoing healthcare that may impinge their mental competence, people of diminished mental capacity, and military personnel. In those cases, people could publish, and actually not be publishing because they either don't have the capacity to understand or the right, so we just need to be careful. However, this has nothing to do with the expectation of privacy or being very personal, in those cases, if the person is not in a protected class, published is published. On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 9:31 PM, Brabham, Daren C <dbrabham@email.unc.edu>wrote:
I would even respectfully disagree about this line:
"Sometimes even when a blog is technically public, if it is about a very personal matter (like illness, or family) there is an expectation of privacy/anonymity even when the blog is publicly accessible. In those cases I could understand going with pseudonyms, but not with blogs about indie music."
The act of publication is to make public a set of ideas, and at that point it becomes an artifact--a text--game for analysis without the concern of human subject research ethics (in my opinion). Again, if the authors attempt to password-protect their work, that's an IRB-worthy issue, but otherwise, even if it's about a "personal matter," the act of publication is a public thing...thus no IRB needed.
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 _______________________________________________ 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
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-- jeremy hunsinger Center for Digital Discourse and Culture Virginia Tech www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. -Pablo Picasso
On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 9:31 PM, Brabham, Daren C <dbrabham@email.unc.edu> wrote:
The act of publication is to make public a set of ideas, and at that point it becomes an artifact--a text--game for analysis without the concern of human subject research ethics (in my opinion). Again, if the authors attempt to password-protect their work, that's an IRB-worthy issue, but otherwise, even if it's about a "personal matter," the act of publication is a public thing...thus no IRB needed.
I apologize if I can not articulate this very well but the statements above bother me quite a bit. I think one of the things that bothers me most is the assumption that all publication is equal and that privacy is binary when those are both very problematic (and demonstrably false) assumptions, particularly the privacy one. Jeremy's reminder about those with limited mental capacity or agency gets at one potential source of this unease by reminding us of the need to contextualize this discussion but there is a whole lot more context that is necessary. It would also be good if we could be more careful to disambiguate discussions and decisions about the politics and procedures of IRB approval from broader and more nuanced ethical issues and concerns. I'm all for telling IRB that some studies or decisions are not theirs to make or control but let's please be careful not to imply that we can toss out ethical concerns because we're "working with text" or "not working with people." I don't think anyone here intends that or has said that but it's an easy conclusion to reach and something to be avoided with great caution, IMHO. Kevin
The UK's ESRC published a revised ‘Framework for Research Ethics (FRE)’<http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCINFOCENTRE/OPPORTUNITIES/research_ethics_framework/>, which is available in full on the Web. I thought the six key principles of ethical research — principles that the ‘ESRC expects to be addressed whenever applicable' — are very useful guidelines, but I'd welcome any comment. See: http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/dutton/2010/02/05/principles-to-guide-research-et... On 17 Oct 2010, at 17:06, Kevin Guidry wrote: William Dutton, Director Professor of Internet Studies Oxford Internet Institute 1 St Giles', Oxford OX1 3JS UK e-mail: william.dutton at oii.ox.ac.uk<http://oii.ox.ac.uk> Web: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=1 Phone: +44 (0)1865 287 212 Cell: +44 (0)7768 823906
Kevin's point is an excellent one, and clarifies my earlier post that sometimes even with "published" material on public blogs and message forums, the writers often have some expectation of privacy with the personal material they post. This does not mean we ought to go through IRB to analyze these kinds of documents, but that as researchers we need to decide for ourselves how much about the material we study is appropriate to identify in our writing (and what we might feel more comfortable using a pseudonym for). For example, in my research on the mothers of service members who belong to public online support forums, I received IRB permission to conduct interviews with the mothers, but not for my analysis of their online material. Still, I decided to use pseudonyms for participants even when they had their own publicly published blogs in order to protect their personal views. Individuals use the internet differently, and when people blog about personal issues they often do so to share their thoughts with what they perceive to be a small group of others in the same situation. Sure, I could have considered their blog posts to be public documents and cited them by name etc., but I would not have felt good about that decision. It is not just text, there are individuals behind that text. Yes, the internet is public, but the way people use it blurs the lines between what is public and what is private, and we have to consider the implications of this complexity on a case by case basis. -Wendy Wendy M. Christensen, Ph.D. Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bowdoin College wchriste@bowdoin.edu On Oct 17, 2010, at 12:06 PM, Kevin Guidry <krguidry@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 9:31 PM, Brabham, Daren C <dbrabham@email.unc.edu> wrote:
The act of publication is to make public a set of ideas, and at that point it becomes an artifact--a text--game for analysis without the concern of human subject research ethics (in my opinion). Again, if the authors attempt to password-protect their work, that's an IRB-worthy issue, but otherwise, even if it's about a "personal matter," the act of publication is a public thing...thus no IRB needed.
I apologize if I can not articulate this very well but the statements above bother me quite a bit. I think one of the things that bothers me most is the assumption that all publication is equal and that privacy is binary when those are both very problematic (and demonstrably false) assumptions, particularly the privacy one. Jeremy's reminder about those with limited mental capacity or agency gets at one potential source of this unease by reminding us of the need to contextualize this discussion but there is a whole lot more context that is necessary.
It would also be good if we could be more careful to disambiguate discussions and decisions about the politics and procedures of IRB approval from broader and more nuanced ethical issues and concerns. I'm all for telling IRB that some studies or decisions are not theirs to make or control but let's please be careful not to imply that we can toss out ethical concerns because we're "working with text" or "not working with people." I don't think anyone here intends that or has said that but it's an easy conclusion to reach and something to be avoided with great caution, IMHO.
Kevin _______________________________________________ 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
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You have two very accessible options. First, prepare a lit review that examines how the problem has been handled by other researchers. Second, your IRB submission was reviewed by full committee give them the lit review and ask them if you can present your case to them. IRB's like every other group of people tend to take a conservative route when presented with something new to them...show them that the issue is not totally new, that others have decided it differently, and then be willing to answer their questions...that will go along way. Lois On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 7:44 PM, Johnson, Thomas J < tom.johnson@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
A master's student I am working with was told by the Human Subjects Committee that in doing a textual analysis of indie music blogs that she could not list the name of the blog but had to use pseudonyms. Has any heard of this before? They are public sites after all and their content is easily searchable. If you were coding newspapers you wouldn't need to identify them as newspaper A or B. I think it is crazy, but wanted to hear what you think. _______________________________________________ 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
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-- Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Candidate - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com CV: http://www.loisscheidt.com/cv.html Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com
participants (13)
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Alex Halavais -
Brabham, Daren C -
Charles Ess -
Jeremy hunsinger -
Johnson, Thomas J -
Kevin Guidry -
live -
Lois Scheidt -
Michael Zimmer -
Steve Jones -
Ulf-Dietrich Reips -
Wendy M. Christensen -
William Dutton