This document discusses issues related to conducting qualitative online research involving human subjects and gaining IRB approval. It raises questions about how IRB policies address digital research methods and the relationship between regulatory definitions of research and ethnographic practices. Specifically, it explores tensions between viewing online content as either public data exempt from IRB versus social interactions that require consideration of privacy and potential harm. The document also questions whether U.S. IRB standards are more restrictive than other countries due to litigiousness and discusses challenges around classifying adolescent participants.

1. Dina Pinsky
Associate Professor of Sociology, Arcadia University,
pinskyd@arcadia.edu

2. 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

3.  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

4.  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

5.  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

6.  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.

7. Game 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

8. 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

9.  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).

10.  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 review
Humanities scholarship should be included in
discussions of internet research ethics (White 2002).

11. 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?

12.  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

13.  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?

14. Questions or comments?
Dina Pinsky pinskyd@arcadia.edu