A Case for Using Online Discussion Forums in Critical Psychological Research

Abstract

Online forums provide a wealth of publicly accessible data and have proven particularly useful for critical psychologists wishing to examine naturalistic data on a wide range of social phenomena. This article begins by considering the use of online discussion forums for critical discursive psychological research and outlines ethical debates regarding their use (particularly in light of past and current British Psychological Society guidelines). To demonstrate how such data can be used in critical psychology I provide an illustrative example of a discursive analysis of a single online discussion thread taken from a diabetes newsgroup that examines anti-social online behaviours in the form of "trolling," "flaming," and heterosexism.

Producing, ratifying, and resisting support in an online support forum

“…While this does not imply that the use of the forum interactions as data is devoid of ethical issues (see Jowett [2015] for a review of literature addressing these issues), our use of the forum is consistent with current ethical guidelines in this regard. For example, the British Psychological Society's (BPS's) ethical guidelines state that "where it is reasonable to argue that there is likely no perception and/or 8 expectation of privacy (or where scientific/social value and/or research validity considerations are deemed to justify undisclosed observation), use of research data without gaining valid consent may be justifiable" (BPS, 2013: 7).…”

“…The specific forum was selected on the basis of having a substantial number of posts, and including threads or posts that exhibited features of seeking and providing support. The forum can be considered a type of "naturally occurring data" -meaning that it consisted of interactions that would have occurred even if they were not being used as data for this study, thus allowing for examination of social processes occurring in a setting not driven by a research agenda (Clayman and Gill, 2004;Jowett, 2015).…”

Is It Safe to Vape? Analyzing Online Forums Discussing E-Cigarette Use during Pregnancy

“…Increasingly, health discussions and information seeking take place online (Fox & Duggan, 2013). Online forums -in which people view, post and respond to (topic) threads within a virtual community -provide a unique opportunity for researchers to access naturalistic data on controversial and sensitive topics without being influenced by the researchers' agenda (Jowett, 2015). Accordingly, online forums offer a new medium to explore public discussions about smoking cessation and harm reduction (e.g.…”

Confessing sex in online student communities

“…While this does not imply that there are no ethical issues involved in using these interactions as research data (see, e.g., Jowett, 2015), our use of the interactions without seeking informed consent from all users (which would not be feasible) is consistent with currently available ethical guidelines in this regard (e.g., BPS, 2013). It is noteworthy that any potential risk of harm to participants as a result of using the data for research purposes is no greater than the potential risks associated with any other use, as a result of being publicly available (see, e.g., Kaufman & Whitehead, 2016).…”