Digital Ethnography and the IRB: Regulatory Limitations Confront Changing Technological AffordancesESS 2016 Presentation: Digital Sociology Mini-ConferenceMarch 17, 2016 12:00-1:30, Boston Park Plaza Hotel
Dina PinskyAssociate Professor of Sociology, Arcadia University, [email protected]
Goals of the paper
1. Explore relationship between research ethics and qualitative online methodologies
2. Raise questions rather than determine answers
3. Inspired by experience gaining IRB approval for teens and social media project
4. Question IRB policies and practices re digital research, while appreciating IRB work
Background on project Interviewed high school students about
digitally mediated communication with peers
Special interest in social media and gender
Follow on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter Do not interact with participants online
n=57 for interviews, 55 for online observations
IRB response to my project More than two months of revisions and
discussions
Concerned with issues of internet privacy, consent, and mandatory reporting
As if I would be observing diary entries or private conversations
Would I ask participants to post on social media that I am observing? Would have prohibited my research
Adolescents and online privacy Teens exert control over online privacy through
social steganography (boyd 2015)
Difficult to discern “true meaning” of intentionally obscure posts, tweets, comments
Privacy level of platform level of social steganography, type of username, amount of sharing E.g. Twitter vs. Facebook: impression management
Result: agency over presentation of self & boundaries
IRB Challenges Insufficient compensation for work and legal
responsibility
Biomedical sciences bias
Under-representation of ethnographers
Protocols vs. inductive design of ethnographic methods
The gap between regulatory definition of research practices and ethnographic methods has grown wider with the advent of qualitative digital research.
Internet research as challenge to ethical regulationGame changer for IRBs Lack of clarity in OHRP guidelines Difficulty of relying on precedents Thus no best practices
Ethical decision making may exceed IRB protocols Exploratory – ethical decision making after data
collection
Ever-changing technological affordances, privacy agreements, and cultural practices
Lack of agreement on classifying online spaces as public or private
Is the internet public space?
Three paradigms:
1. All searchable online content is public data
2. Internet users as amateur artists, online content as cultural text
3. Digital ethnography: online content is social interaction and potentially sensitive due to searchability and traces
1. Searchable content = public
Users know their words are read by the public
Exempt from IRB: researchers analyze digital interactions without interacting with research participants, and de-identify data
direct observation of public space or archival research of publicly available existing
data
Therefore not human subjects research (Walther 2002).
2. Online content = cultural production
Humanities scholars: online material like published texts
Cultural artifacts rather than social interactions of human subjects
Internet users like amateur artists rather than human subjects (Bruckman 2002)
No need for IRB reviewHumanities scholarship should be included in discussions of internet research ethics (White 2002).
But, what about rights to privacy and consent?AoIR 2012 Guidelines (Markham and Buchanan 2012) “Perceived privacy” - expectations of privacy,
control of personal info, and protection from harm
Shifting and Byzantine privacy agreements on social media platforms
Increasing awareness about internet surveillance in media and warnings to adolescents Thus, is perceived privacy on the decline? Is it reasonable to expect privacy online?
3. Digital ethnography My approach to social media research:
subject to IRB review even if no interaction
Varying degrees of privacy on internet
Searchability and digital traces
Confidentiality even more crucial with minors
Yet online research is not more risky than ethnography
Lastly, to pursue further… U.S. IRB standards compared to other countries?
More restrictive, because of litigiousness? “Sensitive data” = culturally variable, e.g. Danish Data
Protection Agency (Lomberg 2012)
Adolescents lumped in with younger minors Yet, research shows 14 and older similar to adults in
ability to understand complex material and be informed (Battles 2010, Santelli et al. 2003)
Lack of ethical clarity ambiguity in field and terminology Digital ethnography, internet archive, or textual analysis?
