Feminist research in online spaces

Abstract

The Internet is growing in popularity as a research site and is often framed as the next frontier in human subjects research. The opportunities the Internet provides for political organizing, making personal experiences more public, and creating spaces for a variety of voices makes it particularly relevant to feminist geographers and researchers such as ourselves. However, many qualitative researchers approach online research as though the Internet simply archives an abundance of data that is 'there for the taking.' Being trained in feminist research methods, we took issue with this approach, yet also encountered challenges when trying to apply feminist practices and ethical perspectives to online research environments. We explore these challenges through a collaborative reflection on our own independent online research experiences. Three themes emerge: (1) interpreting politics and visibility in online spaces, (2) researcher positionality across virtual and material study sites, and (3) subjectivity and power in online research ethics. Reflecting on these themes, we argue that the insights of feminist ethics and a feminist geographical lens are crucial for bringing much-needed reflexivity and reciprocity into online research. Simultaneously, online research opens up exciting new ways of conceptualizing central ideas within feminist research ethics, including politicization, positionality, and power.

Rethinking the geographies of cultural ‘objects’ through digital technologies

“…There will be many different answers to that question, and I can only offer a few preliminary thoughts here (see also Elwood, 2011;Kitchin et al, 2013;Morrow et al, 2014;Wilson, 2014b). Certainly established methods are by no means obsolete: Ash's (2015) account of computer games entails, in part, close readings of particular moments in specific games (and see Blok and Pedersen, 2014;Elwood andLeszczynski, 2013, Grace, 2014), and exploring the production of the Msheireb Downtown visualisations depended in large part on a multi-sited workplace ethnography, as have studies of computer game production (Ash, 2015; O'Donnell, 2011).…”

Consumers' Concerns with How They Are Researched Online

“…As Morrow et al (2015) suggest, the application of feminist ethical practices such as reciprocity and reflexivity to online research can shed light on issues of politics and visibility (whose politics and whose voices are being made visible online, and who is being spoken for), issues of researcher positionality (the various on and offline -visual and material -experiences and roles that shape our relationships with, and understandings of, online participants), as well as issues of subjectivity and power (the decisions we make about research participants' subjectivities when attempting to comply with ethical research guidelines -e.g., whether their discourses 'are just being observed' or whether they are considered authors and co-creators -without their involvement).…”

“…Interdependence also calls for an understanding of responsibility as political, in line with Young's (2004;2006;Owen 2010) and Morrow et al's (2015) works, where issues of responsibility are addressed in relation to structural conditions and socio-economic processes, such as those intrinsic to online consumer research, alongside the disciplinary knowledge and techniques (Foucault 1988;Shankar et al 2006) it generates. According to these authors, we all share responsibility for the harms caused through research, both close and at a distance, given the virtual-material dynamics (Morrow et al 2015) of the transnational structural processes that shape and are shaped by online spaces. The feminist ethics of care and responsibility as outlined in Edwards and Mauthner (2002) can be considered a 10 value-laden relativist approach to research ethics.…”

“…The impetus for the research also evolved as a result of the practical yet relatively narrow focus of institutional online research ethics guidelines (e.g. the MRS Guidelines for Online Research and institutional guidelines), which seem to lack the flexibility required for online consumer research (Morrow et al 2015).…”

“…By online spaces we mean "virtual yet still material extensions of our everyday lives that shape our research subjectivities" (Morrow et al 2015, p.526), and which also shape and are shaped by the social and economic structures that traverse social relations; what Morrow et al (2015) discuss as virtual-material dynamics. The main exploratory research questions addressed in this paper are: (1) What are consumers' perceptions of how they are being researched online?…”