Internet research ethics

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Internet research ethics involves the research ethics of social science, humanities, and scientific research carried out via the Internet.

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Of particular interest is the example of English Wikipedia and research ethics. [1] The usual view is that private and public spaces become blurred on the Internet. [2] [3] There are a number of objections to this stance, which are all relevant to English Wikipedia research. [1] [4] In particular, it can be difficult for researchers to ensure participant anonymity. [5] One study of 112 published educational technology research papers was able to identify participant identities in 10 of those papers; the majority of these studies had gathered this data under conditions of anonymity. [5]

An assessment of ethics in Internet-based research, together with some recommendations, has been prepared by a Working Committee of the Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics Archived 2016-03-06 at the Wayback Machine (PRE)in Canada. [6] PRE is a body of external experts established in November 2001 by three Canadian Research Agencies—the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) -- to support the development and evolution of their joint research ethics policy the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans [ dead link ] (TCPS).

Related Research Articles

Applied ethics is the practical aspect of moral considerations. It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and their moral considerations in private and public life, the professions, health, technology, law, and leadership. For example, bioethics is concerned with identifying the best approach to moral issues in the life sciences, such as euthanasia, the allocation of scarce health resources, or the use of human embryos in research. Environmental ethics is concerned with ecological issues such as the responsibility of government and corporations to clean up pollution. Business ethics includes the duties of whistleblowers to the public and to their employers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Research</span> Systematic study undertaken to increase knowledge

Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to controlling sources of bias and error. These activities are characterized by accounting and controlling for biases. A research project may be an expansion of past work in the field. To test the validity of instruments, procedures, or experiments, research may replicate elements of prior projects or the project as a whole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethnography</span> Systematic study of people and cultures

Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.

Participant observation is one type of data collection method by practitioner-scholars typically used in qualitative research and ethnography. This type of methodology is employed in many disciplines, particularly anthropology, sociology, communication studies, human geography, and social psychology. Its aim is to gain a close and intimate familiarity with a given group of individuals and their practices through an intensive involvement with people in their cultural environment, usually over an extended period of time.

The ethics of technology is a sub-field of ethics addressing ethical questions specific to the technology age, the transitional shift in society wherein personal computers and subsequent devices provide for the quick and easy transfer of information. Technology ethics is the application of ethical thinking to growing concerns as new technologies continue to rise in prominence.

An institutional review board (IRB), also known as an independent ethics committee (IEC), ethical review board (ERB), or research ethics board (REB), is a committee at an institution that applies research ethics by reviewing the methods proposed for research involving human subjects, to ensure that the projects are ethical. The main goal of IRB reviews is to ensure that study participants are not harmed. Such boards are formally designated to approve, monitor, and review biomedical and behavioral research involving humans, and they are legally required in some countries under certain specified circumstances. Most countries use some form of IRB to safeguard ethical conduct of research so that it complies with national and international norms, regulations or codes.

Digital anthropology is the anthropological study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology. The field is new, and thus has a variety of names with a variety of emphases. These include techno-anthropology, digital ethnography, cyberanthropology, and virtual anthropology.

Online ethnography is an online research method that adapts ethnographic methods to the study of the communities and cultures created through computer-mediated social interaction. As modifications of the term ethnography, cyber-ethnography, online ethnography and virtual ethnography designate particular variations regarding the conduct of online fieldwork that adapts ethnographic methodology. There is no canonical approach to cyber-ethnography that prescribes how ethnography is adapted to the online setting. Instead individual researchers are left to specify their own adaptations. Netnography is another form of online ethnography or cyber-ethnography with more specific sets of guidelines and rules, and a common multidisciplinary base of literature and scholars. This article is not about a particular neologism, but the general application of ethnographic methods to online fieldwork as practiced by anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars.

Alison Wylie is a Canadian philosopher of archaeology. She is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia and holds a Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of the Social and Historical Sciences.

An ethics committee is a body responsible for ensuring that medical experimentation and human subject research are carried out in an ethical manner in accordance with national and international law.

Netnography is a "form of qualitative research that seeks to understand the cultural experiences that encompass and are reflected within the traces, practices, networks and systems of social media". It is a specific set of research practices related to data collection, analysis, research ethics, and representation, rooted in participant observation that can be conceptualized into three key stages: investigation, interaction, and immersion. In netnography, a significant amount of the data originates in and manifests through the digital traces of naturally occurring public conversations recorded by contemporary communications networks. Netnography uses these conversations as data. It is an interpretive research method that adapts the traditional, in-person participant observation techniques of anthropology to the study of interactions and experiences manifesting through digital communications.

John Weckert is an Australian philosopher who has been an influential figure in, and substantial contributor to the field of information and computer ethics. He has published many books and journal articles outlining his research in this field.

A Digital researcher is a person who uses digital technology such as computers or smartphones and the Internet to do research. Digital research differs from Internet research in that digital researchers use the Internet as a research tool rather than the Internet itself as the subject of study. A digital researcher seeks knowledge as part of a systematic investigation with the specific intent of publishing research findings in an online open access journal or by other social media information exchange formats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Online interview</span> Method of online research

An online interview is an online research method conducted using computer-mediated communication (CMC), such as instant messaging, email, or video. Online interviews require different ethical considerations, sampling and rapport than practices found in traditional face-to-face (F2F) interviews. Online interviews are separated into synchronous online interviews, for example via online chat which happen in 'real time' online and asynchronous online interviews, for example via email conducted in non-real time. Some authors discuss online interviews in relation to online focus groups whereas others look at online interviews as separate research methods. This article will only discuss online interviews.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Active users</span> Performance metric for success of an internet product

Active users is a software performance metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular software product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from users or visitors within a relevant range of time.

Biobank ethics refers to the ethics pertaining to all aspects of biobanks. The issues examined in the field of biobank ethics are special cases of clinical research ethics.

Visual research is a qualitative research methodology that relies on artistic mediums to produce and represent knowledge. These artistic mediums include film, photography, drawings, paintings, and sculptures. The artistic mediums provide a rich source of information that has the ability to capture reality. They also reveal information about what the medium captures, but the artist or the creator behind the medium. Using photography as an example, the photographs taken illustrate reality and give information about the photographer through the angle, the focus of the image, and the moment in which the picture was taken. Nevertheless, some argue that visual research is not comparable to traditional methodology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interview (research)</span> Research technique

An interview in qualitative research is a conversation where questions are asked to elicit information. The interviewer is usually a professional or paid researcher, sometimes trained, who poses questions to the interviewee, in an alternating series of usually brief questions and answers. They can be contrasted with focus groups in which an interviewer questions a group of people and observes the resulting conversation between interviewees, or surveys which are more anonymous and limit respondents to a range of predetermined answer choices. In addition, there are special considerations when interviewing children. In phenomenological or ethnographic research, interviews are used to uncover the meanings of central themes in the life world of the subjects from their own point of view.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annette Markham</span> American academic

Annette Markham is an American academic, Chair Professor of Media Literacy and Public Engagement at Utrecht University, adjunct professor at RMIT University in Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor of Information Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. She is Director of RMIT's Digital Ethnography Research Centre. She has served on the executive committee of the Association of Internet Researchers since 2013. She publishes research in the area of Internet studies, digital identity, social interaction, innovative qualitative methods for social research, and Internet research ethics.

Qualitative research in criminology consists of research in the criminology field that employs qualitative methods. There are many applications of this research, and they can often intersect with quantitative research in criminology in order to create mixed method studies.

References

  1. 1 2 O'Neil, 2009
  2. King, 1996
  3. "Bakardjieva & Feenberg, 2000" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2009-11-01.
  4. Herring, 1996
  5. 1 2 Dawson, Phillip (2014). "Our anonymous online research participants are not always anonymous: Is this a problem?". British Journal of Educational Technology. 45 (3): 428–437. doi:10.1111/bjet.12144. S2CID   207079157.
  6. "Ethics Special Working Committee, 2008". Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2009-12-27.

Further reading

See also