Direct contacts with potential interviewees when carrying out online ethnography on controversial and polarized topics: a loophole in ethics guidelines
Direct contacts with potential interviewees when carrying out online ethnography on controversial and polarized topics: a loophole in ethics guidelines
Direct contacts with research participants in online ethnography are an important tool to better understand complex social dynamics in cyberspace. The current ethical approaches guiding academic research, however, can be problematic in this regard, creating unintended tensions leading to potential research biases as well as safety and wellbeing issues for researchers working on controversial and polarized topics. The onus, we argue, ends up being on academics to protect and separate the personal information available about them online from the professional, trying to overcome what seems to be an inevitable blurring of boundaries. In this research note, we present two case studies to highlight what we perceive as a loophole in current ethics guidelines.
261-267
Lavorgna, Anita
6e34317e-2dda-42b9-8244-14747695598c
Sugiura, Lisa
e5410b3a-8842-441c-a37f-246ef102f6fa
Lavorgna, Anita
6e34317e-2dda-42b9-8244-14747695598c
Sugiura, Lisa
e5410b3a-8842-441c-a37f-246ef102f6fa
Lavorgna, Anita and Sugiura, Lisa
(2020)
Direct contacts with potential interviewees when carrying out online ethnography on controversial and polarized topics: a loophole in ethics guidelines.
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 25 (2), .
(doi:10.1080/13645579.2020.1855719).
Abstract
Direct contacts with research participants in online ethnography are an important tool to better understand complex social dynamics in cyberspace. The current ethical approaches guiding academic research, however, can be problematic in this regard, creating unintended tensions leading to potential research biases as well as safety and wellbeing issues for researchers working on controversial and polarized topics. The onus, we argue, ends up being on academics to protect and separate the personal information available about them online from the professional, trying to overcome what seems to be an inevitable blurring of boundaries. In this research note, we present two case studies to highlight what we perceive as a loophole in current ethics guidelines.
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20110 annotated manuscript revised
- Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 20 November 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 27 November 2020
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Local EPrints ID: 445153
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/445153
ISSN: 1364-5579
PURE UUID: aaf2a58e-0912-4bf1-9c6a-25a6a7f3e571
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Date deposited: 23 Nov 2020 17:33
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 06:06
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Author:
Lisa Sugiura
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