Vision2Lead welcomes you to attend the upcoming event, "Interviews with Avatars: Online Interview Research in Second Life," on March 4th, 2010. The event will take place within Second Life at 6 PM PST in the Reader's Garden.

The event will be an interactive discussion of ideas about research design and ethical practices from Online Interviews in Real Time with author Janet Salmons (aka Soleil Lemondrop). Janet will share some of the models, approaches and researchers’ experiences included in Online Interviews in Real Time, as well as consider unique issues and dilemmas involved with scholarly interviews in world. Come share your curiosity—and your experiences!

Online Interviews in Real Time is available from Sage Publications, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other booksellers. A Blackboard/WebCT cartridge is available for a Masters or PhD course by contacting Sage at (800) 818-7243

The flyer for this event is available online here.

The International Journal of Internet Research Ethics (IJIRE) seeks papers from researchers describing best ethical practices in the investigation of online communities. This special issue, edited by Aleks Krotoski, aims to create a compendium of case studies and theoretical frameworks which future scholars will reference when designing their own analyses of populations and practices in social networking sites, weblogs, listservs, online games, video sharing sites, virtual worlds and other Web environments that demonstrate evidence of community processes.

The special issue seeks to include submissions that introduce extensions to existing theories - including new frameworks for approaching the ethical
issues that emerge in online communities and novel applications of existing offline ethics frameworks - and examples of best practice - including case studies of successful ethical solutions, both qualitative and quantitative research approaches, issues associated with international ethics practices, and changes to ethical approaches over the short- and the long-term.

While all forms of scholarship and research are welcome, the special issue will feature theoretically and empirically grounded study in the social or behavioural sciences.

To view the full PDF, including submission guidelines and suggested topics, click here.

IRE project member Michael Zimmer has started a conversation at his blog on the question "Is it Ethical to Harvest Public Twitter Accounts without Consent?":

While participating in the workshop on Revisiting Research Ethics in the Facebook Era: Challenges in Emerging CSCW Research, the question arose as to whether it was ethical for researchers to follow and systematically capture public Twitter streams without first obtaining specific, informed consent by the subjects. Many in the room felt that consent was not necessary since the tweets are public, a conscious choice made by the user to allow the whole world see her activity. In short, by not restricting access to one's account, there is no expectation of privacy.

 

I argued, however, that we cannot be so quick to presume the expectations of potential research subjects. Yes, setting one's Twitter stream to public does mean that anyone can search for you, follow you, and view your activity. However, there is a reasonable expectation that one's tweet stream will be "practically obscure" within the thousands (if not millions) of tweets similarly publicly viewable. Yes, the subject has consented to making her tweets visible to those who take the time and energy to seek her out, those who have a genuine interest to connect and view her activity through this social network.

But she did not automatically consent, I argue, to having her tweet stream systematically followed, harvested, archived, and mined by researchers (no matter the positive intent of such research). That is not what is expected when making a Twitter account public, and it is my opinion that researchers should seek consent prior to capturing and using this data.

There is an extensive debate on Zimmer's blog, centering on whether public tweets are public communications, not requiring any additional consent or IRB review, or whether Twitter-based research is dealing with "human subjects" that does require strict scrutiny, and whether making one's tweets public is de facto allowing them to be used for any purpose.

There are quite a number of comments on his blog -- what do IRE readers think?

[image from TPorter2006]

This OHRP Research Forum will take place in Chicago on May 21, 2010.

Visit Research@UIC for full details!

IRE project member Michael Zimmer is participating in a workshop on Revisiting Research Ethics in the Facebook Era: Challenges in Emerging CSCW Research at CSCW 2010. He is presenting submitted a brief analysis of his ethical critique of the “Tastes, Ties, and Time” Facebook dataset release: Subject Privacy and the Release of the “Tastes, Ties, and Time” Dataset.

Zimmer will also be leading a discussion on on the ethical issues related to archiving and releasing research data. His slides to guide the discussion are available here.