Underdeveloped thoughts on research ethics

[onefixedstar]

I was reading through my large archive of Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) listserv posts in the hope that someone else had started a decent lit review on the topic of my current paper, my initial forays into the sociological article indexes having proven mostly futile, when I came across yet another series of posts on one of the eternal debates in internet research: what level of confidentiality do we owe to the people whose online writings we use? Alternatley, what level of privacy can people who post online reasonably expect? The answer usually given by internet researchers, and the consensus on the list, is that any post made online which does not require a password of some sort to access, is public and thus there is no expectation of confidentiality or privacy or need to gain consent before referencing their work. In one sense, I agree with this. As other researchers have observed, to declare all writings posted online private is to expand the definition of privacy beyond all usefulness. At the same time, when we quote blogs or other posts in academic writings, those blogs or posts get brought to the attention of an audience which would probably not have found them otherwise, and I wonder about the ethics of that. People write things knowing that they could be public and could be read by anyone, but they also write knowing who is likely to read them and knowing that the chances of specific types of individuals (or specific individuals) stumbling across them are very small. We change the odds when we write about those people; we bring them readers they weren't anticipating, and I don't know whether that's ethical. I think it's a bit like taking pictures of people's houses for publication. The exteriors of houses are completely public--visible to anyone who passes--and many people work hard to make their houses attractive for people walking by, but I think people would still feel as if their privacy had been invaded were they to encounter an academic article with a picture of their house and an analysis of their socioeconomic status.

I suspect this is an issue that my colleagues and I will eventually have to address more carefully.

ETA: And I see as I read further into the discussion that others have raised the same concern. So perhaps it's not an issue of addressing things more carefully, but rather of spreading the word. Oh, and I also found a post with a list of articles on my topic that ought to serve as a good starting point for my research.

Comments

[semiotic-trader.livejournal.com]

The other factor is that, unlike with your house, you can always take down your website/blog/whatever if it starts drawing too much attention and making you uncomfortable. Of course, the damage may already be done by then, but it does present something of a mitigating factor.

Just my 2 cents.

[onefixedstar.livejournal.com]

You can move, too, but that's a hassle and it seems a little unfair to put people in that position. Still, you have a point.