Question Three, Internet Privacy and Qualitative Research

Question three discusses issues of privacy in regards to methodological approaches to online research. Although privacy and informed consent have always been an important issue when conducting research, it has become increasingly complicated with online communication. Svenginsson address this issue by by discussing what makes content public or private in online spaces and what strategies researchers can use when deciding when informed consent is necessary.

Sveningsson begins by discussing ethical research guidelines for conducting offline research. However, she quickly notes that these guidelines cannot apply to internet inquiry because of the complicated nature of online public spaces. In order to help define what is public and private, Svenginsson provides a framework which views privacy as a continuum, rather then a dichotomy. The continuum is broken into four categories:

1. Public: open and available for everyone who has internet access. (chat rooms, web pages)

2. Semi- Public: one that is available to most people but requires membership and registration. (myspace, facebook)

3. Semi-private: available only to some people. (company intranets)

4. Private- hidden or unavailable to most people. (private chat rooms, photo albums)

Although these four categories can help researchers decide when informed consent is necessary, the perception of the user and viewer also needs to be considered. For example, a myspace account may fall under the category of semi-public but the user may be unaware that his actions are in a public space. This negligence must be taken into consideration when deciding if informed consent is necessary. The content and context of the online communication must also be considered because users may be well aware their online activity is in a public space but still may not feel comfortable with their communications being taken out of context and used in a research study.

Svenginsoon concludes by discussing how there cannot be a concrete model or set of guidelines when dealing with issues of privacy on the internet. Rather, each research project requires an examination of the material being studied and how the user may perceive his online actions. This can be a very difficult task for researchers because they may perceive privacy different then the users they are studying.

The end of the chapter also briefly mentions that instead of focusing on what is public and private a researcher can instead decide if they are inflicting harm to the people they are researching. I think this is a good guideline that can be used when researchers are making decisions about ambiguous areas of online communication. I also thought Susan's suggestion of using pilot studies to be a good approach for researchers when trying to understand how certain online groups perceive issues of privacy. This method not only allows the researcher to gain insight into how certain people perceive online privacy, but also allows them to do so without affecting the potential research group.

While reading these chapters I also found myself thinking about the research I read for my literature review and what methodological approaches were used for these studies. Many of the research projects consisted of viewing hundreds of myspace profiles and looking for patterns of behavior in certain demographic areas. In these studies specific information about each profile was not disclosed, but rather, overarching themes and behavioral patterns were identified and analyzed. I think in these cases the users were not harmed, personal information was not disclosed and informed consent was not necessary.

http://aoir.org/

http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf