Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
given discipline. As an illustration, I (TJG) once received an email indicating
that I owed the other person several dollars and was probably too drunk at
a party the previous evening to realize I had borrowed the money. As I was
confident I had not been out the previous night and knew I hadn't borrowed
any money, I was intrigued. I did a little sleuthing and discovered that some-
one in the Psychology Department was conducting a study on people's
reactions to email and was sending out messages to a random group of indi-
viduals on the university system to determine how people would react to a
provocative and inaccurate email. In this instance, deception was necessary
to evoke a response. If the researcher's discipline had frowned upon this
type of deception for research purposes, the researcher would have needed
to rethink the purpose and design of the study.
While traditional research ethics are a useful starting point, the online
environment represents new ethical challenges for researchers that require
thinking outside of the boundaries of traditional research. Informed consent,
confidentiality, anonymity, privacy, the nature of what constitutes private and
public spaces, virtual personae, copyright, and more, take on new meanings
and require fresh insights when you are conducting research in the online
environment.
Most online methods books will include comments on the topic of ethical
challenges, such as Annette Markham's (1998) discussion about being honest
about her age online, or Christine Hine's (2000) discussion of self-disclosure -
or not - as an active participant/researcher in an online newsgroup. In addi-
tion, there are articles such as Susannah Stern's in
New Media & Society
(2003)
and books such as Elizabeth Buchanan's
Readings in Virtual Research Ethics:
Issues and Controversie
s (2004) that offer fresh and helpful insights. Online
researchers are well advised to venture into the emerging literature to review
ethical considerations as they design and pursue an online study.
Data storage
In the past, technological innovations have raised new methodological questions
on conducting research. For example, taped interviews raised questions of who
would have access to the tape, where it would be stored, and who would be
responsible for making those decisions. Likewise, video cameras raised many
similar issues (Shrader-Frechette, 1994; Sieber, 1992). Researchers turned to the
guidelines of their respective professions seeking hints and advice so they could
make judgments about these issues relative to their research. Similarly, many
would like to be responsible about respecting the privacy and confidentiality of
research subjects in cyberspace. However, the technology of computer-mediated
communication raises issues that have not been dealt with in previous
research. Lacking satisfactory encryption, for example, can a researcher guar-
antee participant protection of privacy and confidentiality (Eisenberg, 1996)?
