Exploring Ethical Challenges in Youth Research using Web 2.0 Blogs

1. Youth Research in Web 2.0 A Case Study of Blog Analysis Helene Snee, Sociology, University of Manchester

2. Outline • Ethical Issues • Subject or Author? • Informed Consent • Ethical Decision-Making • Web 2.0 • Gap Year Research • Why blogs? • Methodological Issues • Representative? • Data Analysis • Authenticity

3. Web 2.0 • Social software and user content • Producers = users • Interaction • ‘Archives of everyday life’ • “preferences, choices, views, gender, physical attributes, geographical locations, background, employment and educational history, photographs…” (Beer and Burrows 2007) • The personal is now public

4. Gap Year Research • Young people taking a year out • Overseas • Between school and university • Travel, employability and cultural capital • Two sources of qualitative data • Blogs • Interviews

5. (Huffaker, 2006: 3)

6. Why Blogs? • Practical advantages, e.g. access • Wealth of data • Unobtrusive • Presentation of gap year stories • Own language and reflections • Combining with other methods

7. Methodological Issues

8. Methodological Issues: Representative? • ‘Digital divide’? • “…..access to the Internet is a matter not only of economics, but also of one’s place in the world in terms of gender, culture, ethnicity and language…..” (Mann and Stewart 2000: 31). • Who are we capturing? • Alternative perspectives?

9. Methodological Issues: Data Analysis • New form of text • “… its inherent intertextuality, its lack of center [sic], its volume, its multimedianess, its international scope, its impermanence, and the resulting sense of authorship” (Mitra and Cohen, 1999: 199). • Blogs contain: • Text; pictures; video; comments; hyperlinks; audio; adverts • Balancing potential of method with pragmatism

10. Methodological Issues: Authenticity • Verifying identity: • “Anonymity in text-based environments gives one more choices and control in the presentation of self, whether or not the presentation is perceived as intended” (Markham 2005: 809). • Web 2.0 and everyday life • Research aims and objectives • Gap year blogs and presentation of experience • Blogs alongside interview data

11. Ethical Issues

12. Ethical Issues: Subject or author? • Person in space or text with author • Subject defined as: • “… a living individual about whom an investigator… conducting research obtains data through intervention or interaction with the individual, or identifiable private information” (Frankel and Siang 1999: 16). • Traceable data and anonymity • Respecting rights as author

13. Ethical Issues: Informed Consent • Informed consent not required for ‘published’ material • Technological privacy • User perceptions of privacy • Gap Year Research • Awareness of unseen audience • Compromise anonymity

14. Ethical Decision-Making • Tension between acknowledging authorship and protecting identity • Data in public domain • Informed consent not required • ‘Personal but not private’ • Data anonymised • Bruckman (2002): ‘moderate disguise’

15. Conclusion • Contextualised ethics • What could I have done better? • Data collection • Dealing multimedia • Interactive potential • Your views / comments?

16. Selected Bibliography BEER, D. and Burrows, R. (2007) “Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations”, Sociological Research Online, 12(5). Available from: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/5/17.html BRUCKMAN, A. (2002) “Studying the Amateur Artist: A perspective on disguising data collected in human subjects research on the Internet", Ethics and Information Technology 4: 217-231. BRUCKMAN, A. (2004) “Opportunities and Challenges in Methodology and Ethics” in Johns, M.D, Chen, S-L. S, Hall, G.J. (eds) Online Social Research: Methods, Issues and Ethics New York: Peter Lang. ESS, C. and the AoIR ethics working committee (2002) Ethical decision-making and Internet Research: Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working Committee. Available from: http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf FRANKEL, M. and Siang, S. (1999) “Ethical and Legal Aspects of Human Subjects Research on the Internet", American Association for the Advancement of Science Workshop Report. Available from: http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/srfl/projects/intres.main.htm HOOKWAY, N. (2008) “’Entering the blogosphere:’ some strategies for using blogs in social research” Qualitative Research 8(1) 91-113. HUFFAKER, D. (2006). “Teen Blogs Exposed: The Private Lives of Teens Made Public”, Presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in St. Louis, MO., February 16-19 MANN, C. and Stewart, F (2000) Internet Communication and Qualitative Research London: SAGE. MARKHAM, A.N. (2005) “The Methods, Politics and Ethics of Representation In Online Ethnography”, in Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S. (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Thousand Oaks: SAGE. MITRA, A., & Cohen, E. (1999). Analyzing the web: Directions and challenges. InS. Jones, (Ed.), Doing internet research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. VIEGAS, F.B. (2005) “Bloggers’ expectations of privacy and accountability: An initial survey”, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(3): article 12. WHITEMAN, N. (2007). The Establishment, Maintenance, and Destabilisation of Fandom: A Study of Two Online Communities and and Exploration of Issues Pertaining to Internet Research. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Institute of Education