Anything Goes?! Ethical Dimensions of Online Research

Anything Goes?!

Ethical Dimensions of Online Research

Nele Heise | Hans Bredow Institute Hamburg

GMaC Colloquium, University of HamburgNovember 26, 2013

Agenda

1. Research ethics & ethical standards2. Ethical aspects throughout the research process 3. »Hybridity« & particularities of online research 4. Informed Consent 5. Publication6. Outlook

2Heise | Online Research Ethics

Research ethics?

»Ethics are guidelines and principles that help us to up hold our values – to decide which goals of research are most important and to reconcile values and goals that are in conflict. Ethical guides are not simply prohibitions; they also

support our positive responsibilities.« Diener/Crandall (1978: 3)

Central dimensions of research ethics(shared) value base, responsibility, ethical decision-making

Recommended ReadingDiener & Crandall 1978; Williams, Rice & Rogers 1988; Strohm Kitchener/Kitchener 2009; Fenner 2010

Search for criteria to assess and decide upon »right behavior«


Ethical standards and research participants

Voluntariness of participation as prerequisite Principle of »informed consent« Participant protection: Anonymity, Privacy, Do no harm

principle (avoiding potential risks) Legal context: personal rights (of third parties); data security

and privacy protection (e.g. »Bundesdatenschutzgesetz«); (right of) informational self-determination as a normative concept, an applied practice, required competence (Schmidt 2012); rights of third parties, e.g. Terms of Use


(Some) ethical aspects throughout the research process

Recruitment

Data Collecting

Data analysis

Publication

Access to certain »spaces«, areas

Access to Participants

Visibility/authenticity strategies

Anonymity vs. Authorship

Anonymization strategies

(Inter)action / behavior vs. Artifact

voluntariness / informed consent

Data security / storage

Do no harm principle

Transparency | Disclosure | Reciprocity

???


Research contexts

• ethical standards of research • technical / methodological requirements of research• research experience / practices and focus/subject

Use contexts • ethical principles of online communication• (in)formal rules of play (e.g. netiquettes)• media literacy/competence

• technical & social frames of media practices• characteristics of online communication• terms of use, providers’ rights• ethical argumentation, position, paradigm • fidelity & responsibility

hybrid contexts


»Hybridity« of online research contexts

Ethically relevant dimensions of online research

Web as a »science laboratory«: comprehensive logging and storage, richness of data, accessible archive of communication and interaction processes o Deeper insights into previously inaccessible areas, Lebenswelten, activities (e.g.

mapping of networks); ambivalence of certain methods, e.g. data mining, log file analyses, profiling

informational constraints: disembodiment, virtualization (textuality); degree of social presence, anonymity (verification, identification/authentication) o Need to »produce« visibility of researchers, disclosure of research (e.g. »fake

profiles«), passive forms of observation

(spatial/temporal) de-contextualization, global reach of research and data

Blurring boundaries of publicity and privacy (data, »spaces«)


Stakeholders of ethical decision-making

Guidelines

Code of Ethics

Intermediaries

8Heise | Online Research EthicsFigure in: McKee/Porter (2009: 17)

Changing actor constellations

User(s)

Researcher(s)

Intermediaries

Who interacts with whom/what?

Intermediaries implement their own values and control the horizon of possibilities

New dependencies

Terms of Use as a replacement for informed consent?


Two important ethical questions

1. When – and by whom – is consent necessary throughout the research process ?

2. As regards publication: what degree of data anonymization is necessary?

Shameless self-promotion: Heise/Schmidt 2014; Heise 2013; Schmidt 2009


Necessity of Informed Consent

1. What degree of publicity/privacy can be assumed? Explicitly articulated expectations and self-descriptions (e.g. forums) Evaluating the users‘ abilities and competences to assess certain aspects Criteria: accessibility, sensitivity (data/information) Prioritization of the user perspective

2. Research interest: Do you focus on behavior/action or artifacts?

3. Are providers (of what kind) involved? Access to communicative spaces (Terms of Use, access restrictions) Automated collection of platform data


Necessity of Informed Consent

Visual heuristic to decide upon the necessity of informed consent; as in: McKee/Porter (2009: 132/136)


Context matters

Problem: Blurring boundaries of public/private

Context (e.g. the »imagined audience«) influences produced data and users‘ expectations

Recording content/data as a (potential) violation of the »contextual integrity« (Nissenbaum 2004), i.e. social norms – or even Terms of Use

Aggregation, combination, processing of content/data as a (potential) violation of privacy (boyd 2010); informational self-determination, autonomy of participants?

Heise | »big data« & Forschungsethik 13

Context matters

Problem of »frictionless sharing« - what context?


Publication of Findings

Do no harm principle and privacy protection (accounts for every type of publication, e.g. presentations)

Challenges, e.g. searchability and linkability of data across services and platforms, data persistence, variety of data formats

Differentiation: owner/author/originator vs. »normal« participants/users; aggregated vs. single data

Possible solutions: »Data Fabrication« (Markham 2012), visual paraphrases (W. Reißmann), word/tag clouds etc.


Publication of Findings

Exemplary anonymization, see Heise/Schmidt (2014)


Instead of a conclusion …

»There cannot be a blanket, whole cloth approach to Internet Research ethics. Contextual details matter, including: What … is the object of analysis of the study – texts, aggregated bits of information, or the persons themselves? What are the use expectations of the online site and of the online participants? What is the sensitivity of the information collected? What are the ages, geo-cultural-political affiliations, and/or technological expertise of the online participants? In what form are the researchers collecting data, and in what forms are they re-distributing it? Is the researcher using real names or real user/avatar names, quoting passages, taking screenshots, etc.? And where will this material appear and to whom will it be accessible?«

McKee/Porter (2009: 7f.)

Orientation needed?ESOMAR Guidelines (esomar.org), DGOF Guidelines (dgof.de),

AoIR recommendations (2013), ADM quality criteria (2011)


Outlook and Open End

With online research, ethical decision-making is more complicated, e.g. due to de-contextualization, global reach, cross-linking and persistence of data, legal insecurities growing need to weigh technical feasibility and ethical tenability of online research

»old« questions regarding the »rightness«, responsibilities and consequences of research gain new relevance

Upcoming Challenges: o mobile devices; »Big Data«, geo-located datao research related »online spaces«, App-based research, utilization of APIs,

design of research instruments/tools (opt-out/opt-in)o Combination of datasets, »frictionless sharing«


Thanks!

Nele Heise, M.A.Hans Bredow Institute [email protected] @neleheise www.neleheise.de

References (1/2)

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Anything Goes?! Ethical Dimensions of Online Research

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