I read the original post and found myself just blinking for several seconds, and seriously hoping it was a joke. The idea that because someone might not understand the technology is a good excuse for avoiding an ethics process is, for me, just beyond words. In every facet of research - work at the university level, the organizational level, or done independently - there is an implied educational component, so it is your job to educate your audience. Beyond that point, why is the focus on the differences the technology brings rather then the similarities to other research in different venues? Ethnics review systems have looked at similar research done in terrestrial environments - think phone books and university "freshman" registries, etc. The technology is not the issue...a complicator yes, but not the main issue. You should spend sometime studying published work that has used facebook and livejournal - to name a few - as sources of data for other studies. Your basic question(s) may have been answered through means already vetted through an ethics process. Finally, I will suggest you first review the facebook ToS before dwelling on the ToS of individual applications within their environment. Companies like facebook are not individual actors under human subjects ethics concepts but they are collectives of individual actors or even sole proprietorships who deserve to be studied ethically no matter if the study is direct or indirect. There has not been enough discussion of the ethics of trespassing where a "No Trespassing" sign has been publicly posted, and I humbly think that more discussion is needed. I fully expect we will eventually see litigation on this subject...something I would personally rather watch than being the main focus of the action. I have to say that over the last year I've become more aware of and less open to research that comes without a statement of the projects compliance with the local ethics review systems. While social research rarely rises to the level of some of the more often cited problematic medical and psychological research done before the advent of the review process, I have to question the personal superiority embedded in the idea that our research is never problematic, we can individually - and at all times - recognize any potential negative impact of our work, and/or because we do cutting edge tech research the newness of the field makes our work too hard to explain to someone outside the field. That sense of superiority is at the heart of most of the research that got us ethics review boards of all stripes. Personally, I welcome review - now that I understand the process - because in most cases it had made my research stronger. Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Student - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Adjunct Instructor - School of Informatics, IUPUI, Indianapolis IN USA and IUPUC, Columbus IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com

On 11/20/07 10:42 PM, "Tomas Lin" <tomaslin@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hi everyone,

I am starting a research project that tries to explore the potential of data collection and online surveys through Facebook Applications.

Given that this is an independent project not founded by my university and not attached to any faculty member, should I go through the ethics process of getting approval and ethical review? How would this affect the validity and publishing potential of this data?

There are already applications on Facebook that claim in their terms of services "This data could be shared with interested third parties". And I think my application is no different. What would be the advantages of getting ethics forms approved for this type of research? Do journals look down on data that is not obtained through traditional academic routes?

I am concerned that since ethics review boards do not understand the nature of this technology, and there are many dimensions of this exploratory study that simply do not conform to the information being required in forms from ethics boards. I am also concerned about many of the potential limitations that will be placed on this research project from ethics.

Any guidance will be appreciated,

Thank you,

Tomas _______________________________________________ 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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