Direct contacts with potential interviewees when carrying out online ethnography on controversial and polarized topics: a loophole in ethics guidelines

Abstract

Direct contacts with research participants in online ethnography are an important tool to better understand complex social dynamics in cyberspace. The current ethical approaches guiding academic research, however, can be problematic in this regard, creating unintended tensions leading to potential research biases as well as safety and wellbeing issues for researchers working on controversial and polarized topics. The onus, we argue, ends up being on academics to protect and separate the personal information available about them online from the professional, trying to overcome what seems to be an inevitable blurring of boundaries. In this research note, we present two case studies to highlight what we perceive as a loophole in current ethics guidelines.

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Denmark and Russia: A qualitative typology at the nexus of agency and health capital

“…The characteristics of these groups are detailed in Table 1 , with the actual group names replaced by focus areas in order to aid the deidentification of the informants recruited from and through these groups. To avoid potential violations of expectations of privacy and any issues regarding informed consent ( Lavorgna & Sugiura, 2020 ), this article refrains from reproducing any excerpts from the data collected from these groups. Descriptive and reflective fieldnotes provided further detail on the netnographic observations.…”

Share with care: negotiating children’s health and safety in sharenting practices

“…Some standards traditionally applied by researchers and ethical boards are inadequate to this framework (e.g. Lavorgna and Sugiura, 2022). Data were anonymized immediately after collection and we did not profile research participants according to any potentially sensitive information (e.g.…”

Using Digital Open Source and Crowdsourced Data in Studies of Deviance and Crime

“…For the better part of the twenty-first century, social scientists such as criminologists have been using digital resources and methodologies to make their research more efficient and to explore new facets of deviant behavior (Powell et al, 2018;Smith et al, 2017). Digital strategies have allowed criminologists to assess deviance and crime in online and offline environments in terms of recruitment (Gundur, 2019;Wood et al, 2019), communication (Cheng, 2017), data collection (Dragiewicz et al, 2018;Giommoni & Gundur, 2018;Lavorgna & Sugiura, 2020;Lawson & Nesbit, 2013;Lynch, 2018;Poletti & Gray, 2019;Potter, 2017;Ramo & Prochaska, 2012), and criminal innovation with technology (Berry, 2018;Cross & Gillett, 2020;Décary-Hétu & Bérubé, 2018;Gillett, 2018;Moule Jr et al, 2013). Overwhelmingly, these methodologies focus on collecting and analyzing open source data, that is, "information derived from sources and by means openly available to and legally accessible and employable by the public" (Schaurer & Störger, 2013, p. 53).…”