Read Understanding Research Online
Authors: Marianne Franklin
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‘Draft Ethical Guidelines for Internet Research/Researching Cyberspace’ (June 15th 2010); reproduced here with kind permission from Tim Crook.
Table A2.1 Guidelines for internet research/researching cyberspace
| Internet/cyberspace | Textual analysis. Access by ‘going online’ using search engines and retrieving internet page impressions without the need for registration, username and password. | Ethical obligations: Attribution, URLs, date and time ‘retrieved/visited’. Disclosure not needed in visits to web- pages, but permission for inclusion of quotations and multi- media recommended. |
| Legal risks: Indecency, anti-terrorism crimes. Breach of copyright/intellectual property laws. | ||
| Internet communities and macro-membership networks Large-scale, e.g. Facebook, MySpace, Friendsreunited, YouTube, Second Life. Computer games such as Fairyland and Farmville. | Textual analysis. Access by joining the large-scale network via registration, username and password. Opinion is divided on whether permission should be obtained by the companies owning these cyberspace ‘networks’ prior to conducting textual analysis research or ‘ethnographic observation’. | Ethical obligations: Attribution, URLs, date and time ‘retrieved/visited’. Disclosure that registration is being made for the purposes of research is advisable. |
| Ethnographic observation without participation. Ethnographic participation. It is advisable to disclose and seek permission not only from the network ‘gate-keepers’ but also from individuals and group forums that are being observed and are responding to your participation. | Legal risks: Mainly breach of copyright/intellectual property laws as issues of indecency and terrorism crimes tend to be excluded or met through the networks’ own pre-moderation and reporting protocols. Participant-observation must avoid the infliction or causation of emotional and/or social harm. Legal risks include communication crimes and torts such as generating racial, religious, or gender orientation hatred, defamation and breach of privacy. | |
| Closed membership Bulletin boards, email exchanges, chat-rooms. | For textual analysis and non-participating observation or participant-observation, prior permission and notification is considered essential. | Ethical obligations: Full and explicit disclosure of identity. The avoidance of social and emotional harm in all communications. |
| Legal risks: These may have been excluded by the adoption of ethical principles cited above. UK law prohibits communication crimes and torts such as generating racial, religious, or gender orientation hatred, harassment, defamation and breach of privacy. | ||
| Subterfuge and ‘undercover’ techniques of investigation | These are generally discouraged in the field of academic research and belong to the daredevil world of journalism or intelligence. It is rare indeed to find any justification for such research behaviour in textual analysis, qualitative interviewing, quantitative surveying or participant and non-partİcİpant ethnographic observation. In cyberspace and internet communications this could involve ‘infiltrating’ communities without prior disclosure and permission, adopting fake identities and social participation in cyber communications and behaviour via an avatar. | Ethical obligations: Such methodology has to be considered at college research sub-committee level and will only be discussed after the furnishing of compelling evidence that there is no other means of undertaking the research; the purpose involves the research of unlawful, anti-social and unethical textual communication and human behaviour. Ethical issues arising involve the acute consideration of justifiable behaviour, utilitarian and deontological analysis, and human rights issues. |
| There are very serious legal risks including fraud, sexual offences, as well as serious civil wrongs in relation to defamation and breaches of privacy and contract. Researching some areas of human sexuality in cyberspace may require registration with the police under the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, and highly specialized academic supervision. | ||
| Consent protocols | These consents must be in writing, and where established by email exchanges should be supported by credible and recognizable electronic signatures. | Ethical obligations: Researchers must be conscious that their research subjects and participants are capable of providing informed consent. Issues do arise where the research subjects are persuaded to consent to any textual or observational analysis that is likely to cause emotional, social, or physical harm. |
| In these circumstances issues of ethics may also give rise to legal risks such as incitement, joint enterprise, and strict liability for sexual and terrorism offences. | ||
| Issues of anonymity These are rather complex in the realm of cyberspace and should be simplified by clarity of promise, expression of obligation and explicit explanation of the limitations and extent of ‘anonymity’ confidentiality. Internet and cyberspace communications leave a digital trail in being retrievable and traceable via search engines, and are ‘saved’ on hard disk servers. Internet texts, authors and behaviour are much more capable of being electronically triangulated and ‘jigsaw’ identified than in the analogue world. Internet identities are usually capable of exposure and confirmation via IP addresses unless they have been communicating using proxy servers. In these circumstances the degree of confidentiality available needs to be qualified. | It is advisable that the authors of textual communications, qualitative interviewees, and individuals and social groups subject to ethnographic observation agree to be identified and that this is obtained in writing to cover inclusion and publication of the research thesis. All research subjects should be informed about the nature of academic publication, e.g. adoption by university library, access via inter-library loans, ProQuest and future public academic book publication. Anonymity protocols need to be by written consent with force majeure declarations and qualified assurances based on the nature of the internet medium. | Ethical obligations: Promises concerning confidentiality and anonymity need to be either guaranteed or qualified. A time- limit as well as arrangements for the protection and storage of research data needs to be determined prior to the start of any project. Legal risks: Breach of privacy, contract and confidentiality. |
Source:
‘Draft Ethical Guidelines for Internet Research/Researching Cyberspace’ (June 15th 2010); reproduced here with kind permission from Tim Crook.
Does the proposed research involve working with human subjects, on the ground or online? Yes/No
Examples of research involving human subjects include (but are not limited to): carrying out interviews; conducting a survey; distributing a questionnaire; carrying out focus groups; and observation of individuals or groups. Where this research can take place can be in conventional, on-the-ground settings, on the web, or a combination of the two.
If so please respond to the questions below in Part A, and Part B where necessary. If not please proceed to sign and date the form and attach to your project the following items [for example]:
If you have answered YES to any of the questions in PART A, sections 1–3, you will also need to comply with the requirements of PART B of this form.
If you have answered ‘NO’ to all of the questions in sections 1–3 above, please ignore PART B of the form.
You should return a hard and soft-copy to your supervisor for approval or further consultation.
As noted above, the supervisor can contact the Departmental Ethics Subcommittee about any issues arising.
This form should be considered and completed before research begins.
This part of the application form is only relevant where researchers have answered ‘YES’ to any of the questions in sections 1–3 of PART A.
As you design and plan your project the question below will help you make some decisions and ensure you are aware of relevant elements.
Please attach a preliminary Consent Form, or provide an indication of a culturally appropriate form of consent that applies to this project.
Please consider and answer the following questions
where relevant to your research project
as well as you can. These may best be completed after consultation with your supervisor:
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This form is similar to one used by the Department of Media and Communications,Goldsmiths (UK) designed for master students to consider for their research projects, as an educative and research design tool.
Note
: Glossaries at the end of books may appear quaint in an age where many students start and end their referencing and research projects online. This glossary dovetails these online sources alongside those provided by other books in this field.
Academic misconduct
This term encompasses a number of transgressions within formal and informal codes of conduct in research communities; from accidentally or deliberately citing someone else’s work without providing a full reference, claiming the ideas or expressions of someone else as your own, getting someone else to write the work instead of you, to making up data or manipulating results. The increased use of the cut-and-paste functions of word-processing software in tandem with the ease of web-based access to written texts, images, and other media has raised the stakes in this regard.