For Your Consideration: The NEW AOIR Ethics Document
Dear Colleagues: Almost exactly ten years ago, the AOIR ethics committee sent a note to this mailing list asking for the AOIR members to endorse a new statement on ethical decision-making. On behalf of the AIOR ethics committee, we are pleased to present Version 2.0 for your consideration. You might remember that we provided a draft version of this document last year. After collecting comments and then discussing the document at the AOIR conference in Seattle, we revised to the final form. The Ethics Committee has approved this document. And the Executive Committee has endorsed it. Now, we ask for your endorsement as a membership. The question we’d like you to answer is this: "Should AoIR endorse the ethics committee's new statement on ethical decision-making as its statement of principles of Internet research ethics, with the understanding that this statement is open to future revisions in light of additional ethical insight and/or new technological developments?" If you are a member of AOIR (and if you’re not, now’s a great time to consider joining!), please: a) review the new document http://www.aoir.org/documents/ethics-guidelines/ethics.pdf and then b) login to the members-only section of the AOIR website to vote on whether or not you would like AOIR membership to endorse it. https://aoir.org/welcomemembers/ Voting is now open, and will close midnight, November 26, Eastern Standard Time, 2012. As always, we are grateful to the members of the ethics committee for their hard work, deliberation, and insight. Best Regards, Annette Markham, incoming chair of the AOIR Ethics Committee Elizabeth Buchanan, outgoing chair of the AOIR ethics committee Alex Halavais, President of AOIR P.S. If you have questions, additional commentary, or copy-editing corrections for the document, we welcome it via email to amarkham@gmail.com
ugh. sorry for the broken link: The actual link for the ethics document is: http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethics2.pdf sigh, annette ***************************************************** Annette N. Markham, Ph.D. Guest Professor, Department of Informatics, Umeå University, Sweden Affiliate Professor, School of Communication, Loyola University, Chicago amarkham@gmail.com http://markham.internetinquiry.org/ Twitter: annettemarkham On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Annette Markham <amarkham@gmail.com>wrote:
Dear Colleagues:
Almost exactly ten years ago, the AOIR ethics committee sent a note to this mailing list asking for the AOIR members to endorse a new statement on ethical decision-making. On behalf of the AIOR ethics committee, we are pleased to present Version 2.0 for your consideration.
You might remember that we provided a draft version of this document last year. After collecting comments and then discussing the document at the AOIR conference in Seattle, we revised to the final form. The Ethics Committee has approved this document. And the Executive Committee has endorsed it. Now, we ask for your endorsement as a membership.
The question we’d like you to answer is this:
"Should AoIR endorse the ethics committee's new statement on ethical decision-making as its statement of principles of Internet research ethics, with the understanding that this statement is open to future revisions in light of additional ethical insight and/or new technological developments?"
If you are a member of AOIR (and if you’re not, now’s a great time to consider joining!), please:
a) review the new document
http://www.aoir.org/documents/ethics-guidelines/ethics.pdf
and then
b) login to the members-only section of the AOIR website to vote on whether or not you would like AOIR membership to endorse it. https://aoir.org/welcomemembers/
Voting is now open, and will close midnight, November 26, Eastern Standard Time, 2012.
As always, we are grateful to the members of the ethics committee for their hard work, deliberation, and insight.
Best Regards,
Annette Markham, incoming chair of the AOIR Ethics Committee Elizabeth Buchanan, outgoing chair of the AOIR ethics committee Alex Halavais, President of AOIR
P.S. If you have questions, additional commentary, or copy-editing corrections for the document, we welcome it via email to amarkham@gmail.com
I am sorry, I don't think I can support it as is at this time. I think it still needs revision and clarification. The reasons are that the document has things like: "Because all digital information at some point involves individual persons..." which is false. and: "consideration of principles related to research on human subjects may be necessary even if it is not immediately apparent how and where persons are involved in the research data." which this is broadening the standard accepted doctrine on the difference between document/object and subject too far. It also will create confusion. Similarly the document seems to go on at length about issues which are part of grey areas to a few types of practices and attempts to deeply problematize those grey areas without considering those practices where the exact same material and practice is not grey, but has been very clear for 20, sometimes even 50 years. Minimally, where one provides access to the grey area in such deep positions, one should recognize the practices of people who don't see it as grey and why it is not grey. In particular the focus on authors seems to deny the many years of dealing with them in journalism and literature, similarly the question as data as person has been considered for years in hci/computer science. I know there is a tendency to want to universalize our problems as researchers and make our problems accessible to all, but here I am particularly wary because many of our colleagues do research in manners in which this report could bring into ethical question. That can have detrimental effects on people's careers, and as such I think we, as an interdisciplinary and international organization per our mission, need to minimally acknowledge the prior practices and plurality where they are already viewed as ethical just a bit more. We just have to provide more of the counterpoint that 'this can be ethical' where people already consider it ethical. Otherwise, I think this is an excellent project and an excellent start. j Jeremy Hunsinger Communication Studies Wilfrid Laurier University Center for Digital Discourse and Culture Virginia Tech Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. --Pablo Picasso
participants (2)
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Annette Markham -
jeremy hunsinger