Internet Research Ethics and Considerations

The Culture Cat article on research ethics outlined important questions to consider in respect to research subjects/participants. Questions surrounding IRB guidelines, informed consent and the relationship between subject and researcher were all included in the outline.

“Ethical Guidelines for Research” expanded on the Culture Cat outline, emphasizing the importance of informed consent. Something that stood out to me was that subject pseudonyms function in the same way as real names, and should therefore be treated as such when considering the rights and privacy of the subject…a seemingly obvious point, but something that could be overlooked. The article elucidated the different levels of risk to subjects and appropriate corresponding levels of disguising (of the subjects’ identities); also, an archive is considered public if it is accessible without a password. Also emphasized in this particular article: the rights of subjects always come before the integrity of research.

The article on Netnography really elucidated the discipline of ethnography for me – comprised of field work, the study of distinctive meanings, practices and artifacts of particular social groups, and the representations based on the field work – “the construction of meaning is open-ended…grounded in the local, the particular, the specific.” The relationship between the researcher and subject must have a strong basis in trust in order to develop “streams of information” non-manufactured or constructed, casting the researcher in the role of participant and observer as well. Unlike the positivist approach, researchers acknowledge their own bias and background as an inevitable element in their interpretation of results. The objective of the research is a “particularized understanding” of the research material or “grounded theory,” which can be specific, temporal, contextualized, and not necessarily replicable, where the quality of data is evaluated through “trustworthiness” rather than “validity.” Trustworthiness is more concerned with quality of interpretation – appropriate research protocol and thoroughness, as opposed to stringent guidelines which produce a correct, universal or repeatable result.

“Internet Research Ethics” – The main argument of this article was to approach internet research through a hybrid model that considers textual and body considerations, as well as the ( already well established) spatial framework; the “safest” or most commonly used human subjects model has limited application in terms of investigating the cultural production of texts. I found this article really interesting – the spatial paradigm that guides both internet users and researchers overriding the more obvious textual elements inherent to virtual “spaces” and the cultural production that comes out of them, and the relation of this to a capitalist colonization of the internet and the private/commercial interests such a framework serves. It was interesting to note the importance of a suspension of disbelief in terms of creating intimate online communities with a high quality of engagement in users, despite the technically impossible delineation between public and private in virtual spaces. I think the argument for a hybrid model that does not limit virtual texts to “virtual selves nor objects completely distinct from those who write them” is well supported; as well, it complicates ethical issues for researchers focusing on “netnography.”

~ by glycerine517 on September 17, 2007.