Does the Web challenge our traditional ethical arrangements?‘The trials and tribulations of undertaking online observational research’Lisa Sugiura ls3e10@soton.ac.uk

Research Methods Festival Session, Thursday July 9th, 2014

Research Ethics in Context: Qualitative Methods and Ethical Challenges

Agenda

• Ethnography on the Web

• Lurking

• Informed consent and public or private spaces

• An ethical quandary in practice

2

Ethnography conducted online • Traditional definition Hammersley and Atkinson,

1983: 1

• ‘Virtual ethnography’ (Hine, 2000)

• ‘Netnography’ (Kozinets, 2002)

• Is observational research involving no participant interaction meaningful ethnographic study?

3

Lurking • Hine (2000) ‘known presence but no observable

trace’

• An ‘unequal power relationship’ (Heath et al 1999, cited in Grinyer 2007).

4

Challenges for ethics committees • ‘Eliciting informed consent, negotiating access

agreements, assessing the boundaries between the public and the private, and ensuring the security of data transmissions are all problematic in Internet research‘ (BSA 2002: 5 ).

5

Informed consent in online research• Forums, blogs, social media

• Blurring of public and private

• Privacy – Beer and Burrows (2007), Boyd and Marwick (2011), AoIR (2012)

• Contextual integrity (Nissenbaum, 2010)

6

My research - web forums as digital interactions

7

• Data obtained from discussions on web forums

• Researchers: Access to diverse / potentially unreachable groups

• Members: Provides incentive and information

• Public or private?

Public / private disclosures

8

i have been taking for 3 weeks now and lost 1 stone and am feeling a lot more confident and happy in myself......however.......i went to re order the tablets online from where i purchased them b4 as i have ran out only to be told that they are no longer available in the Eu. I am very unhappy about this and have tried lots of uk websites to try and buy them but are having no luck.

“Do you mind me asking where you order them from? Because they’ve just banned them in the EU and I can’t get hold of any anywhere! I really need some.”

“Better news is I know where you can get them for cheaper but I can’t advertise it on here so pm/email me if interested.”

Ethical issues

• Lurking

• Informed consent

• Overt vs. Covert

• Law distinct from morality

9

stepdadding.com

What next? • Non-participant observation rather than

ethnography

10

References• Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) (2012) Ethics Guide

http://aoir.org/documents/ethics-guide/

• BSA (2002) Statement of Ethical Practice for the British Sociological Association. http://www.britsoc.co.uk/media/27107/StatementofEthicalPractice.pdf

• Beer, D., & Burrows, R. (2007). Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some initial considerations. Sociological Research Online, 12(5), 17.

• Boyd, D., & Marwick, A. (2011). Social Privacy in Networked Publics: Teens Attitudes, Practices, and Strategies.

• Grinyer, A. (2007) 'The ethics of Internet usage in health and personal narratives research', Social Research Update 49, University of Surrey.

• Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P. (1983; 1995) Ethnography: Principles in Practice, London: Routledge.

• Hine C. (2000) Virtual Ethnography. London: Sage.

• Kozinets, R. V. (2002), “The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communities,” Journal of Marketing Research, 39 (February), 61-72.

• Nissenbaum, J. (1994). Helen Nissenbaum. Computing and Accountability, Communications of the ACM (January 1994), 72-80. 11

Thank you

Any questions?

Lisa Sugiura

ls3e10@soton.ac.uk

Twitter: @lisa_sugiura

https://soton.academia.edu/LisaSugiura

Supervisors: Prof. Catherine Pope & Dr. Craig Webber

12