Bassett, E. and O'Riordan, K. (2002)
Wide range of internet research, e.g.
But when applied indiscriminately HSR model risks subsuming the human subject into the technology and merging the textuality of the internet. In a climate of fast developing technologies it is often difficult to define the actual object of internet research precisely. The cost of this blanket approach may be a resulting failure to analyse the significant textuality of internet media.
The internet is not simply a virtual space in which human actors can be observed: it is a medium through which a wide variety of statements are produced.
The internet is not simply a text-based medium made up of communities, newsgroups and email lists. It is also a medium of publication, and significantly one where users can take control of the means of production, create their own cultural artifacts and intervene in the production of existing ones. The internet can thus be perceived as a form of cultural production, in a similar framework to that of broadcast, TV & radio.
Three models to consider:
1. Text as reflection of the author.
The decision to disguise online activity, justified through the use of a rhetoric of 'protection' may result in furthering the unequal power relations of media production by blocking full representation of alternative media.
As internet researchers, we need to develop models that acknowledge both spatial and textual understandings of the internet. Such models are required if we are to produce research that examines the complex intersection of technologies, form, genre, and content that the internet supports.
Users may be less informed about the issues involved in textual production via the internet than in print media or traditional broadcast media such as the radio or television. However, researchers cannot afford to assume that individuals engaging in cultural practices through the internet are always at more risk than those using other media.
If an individual or group has chosen to use internet media to publish their opinions then the researcher needs to consider their decision to the same degree that they would with a similar publication in traditional print media.
To maintain a research model akin to the HSR model would be to risk impeding and potentially eliminating promising research. It is not always possible, for example, to gain the consent of a large number of participants who may have changed their email address or ceased posting to a web site on which the material under research is located. This should not prevent research of textual material that they have chosen to output via the internet anymore than it would for textual products in other print or broadcast media.
We should attempt to find a way of acknowledging the hybridity of the internet, acknowledging that the texts it supports are neither virtual selves nor objects completely distinct from those who write them. A reading of the text that includes the content, form, history and researchers' response all need to be considered as part of these relations of production, and power is a central issue. These relations include, for example, statements of intention in the text about whether it is intended for publication or for consumption by a circumscribed group of people... These relations will effect how users perceive their acts of participation and production: for example, is the site like a public forum / message board, or is it more like a newsletter intended only for members of a group? These structures clearly contribute to the user's perceptions of their activity on it.
Commonly deployed spatial models of the internet appear to be seeing a resurgence through the dominant construction of the internet as a place in which human subjects act. We argue that a hybrid model of relational ethics that incorporates text, space and bodies needs to be applied to Internet research. The HSR model only has limited application, and where it is applied indiscriminately or as the 'safest' option it in fact can be unethical and not 'safe' at all.
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From David Pike:
Hi Sue,
Using your "obligation to protect people" and a bit of googling about the idea of duty of care (which seemed like a good phrase) I found there's something called the Caparo Test........so with some intellectual alchemy I would say........
1) If you send/bring/encourage students, assuming no prior experience, to an place/community online/part of an environment - you have an obligation to protect
2) If you gather the students who are part of an existing network e.g. Facebook - you have an obligation to protect only within the bubble you create
3) If you cause students to create new artefacts which are displayed out on the internet you have an obligation to protect by ensuring that students know the rights they hold in relation to said 'things' (i'm thinking of art students, musicians, maketeers, programmers etc).
4) If in any of the cases above you will be working with a group who could / are considered vunerable [e.g 1 perhaps something like the definition and who is sections?] [e.g. 2 - defined as a child] you automatically have an obligation to protect
___________________________________________________________________________________
From Nafeth:
Hello David and Ayman,
I believe that users don't have to learn the technical stuff of information security terminologies to be safe. A big part of the responsibility is on the owners of the websites. One thing they can do is to exercise the 'Due Care' standard that is a the minimum and customary practice of responsible protection of information published through the website. Due care is exercised to ensure that appropriate controls are implemented . Applying this standard implies reasonable care and competence.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Wide range of internet research, e.g.
- virtual ethnography
- linguistic and discourse-bases analyses of computer-mediated communication
- research into the internet as a culture
But when applied indiscriminately HSR model risks subsuming the human subject into the technology and merging the textuality of the internet. In a climate of fast developing technologies it is often difficult to define the actual object of internet research precisely. The cost of this blanket approach may be a resulting failure to analyse the significant textuality of internet media.
The internet is not simply a virtual space in which human actors can be observed: it is a medium through which a wide variety of statements are produced.
The internet is not simply a text-based medium made up of communities, newsgroups and email lists. It is also a medium of publication, and significantly one where users can take control of the means of production, create their own cultural artifacts and intervene in the production of existing ones. The internet can thus be perceived as a form of cultural production, in a similar framework to that of broadcast, TV & radio.
Three models to consider:
1. Text as reflection of the author.
- 'text as a precursor to the virtual self'. Literature as a textual opening into the mind of the revered author (text as reflection), or the 'conflation of text and author'. "Great literature is the product of Great Men, and its value lies chiefly in allowing us intimate access to their souls" (Terry Eagleton, 1983). A 'mind made word'.
- The School of New Criticism challenged the above viewpoint in the post-war period, and was concerned with the interpretation of texts. With New Criticism, the text-as-virtual-writer is replaced by the text-as-object, severed from context, authorial intent, and the response of the reader. Akin to semiotics, it proposed that the meaning of the text lay solely in the language used, regardless of the intentions of the author at the point of writing. The text was considered to be an organic whole and not a window onto the soul of the author. The text, now considered a elf-sufficient object, was also liberated from both social and historical context of production.
- The assumption that a piece of text is an object underlies the logic of copyright law. IN copyright law, the text is not akin to a window onto the author's soul but more akin to a box. The contents belong to the author and s/he is free to distribute them and adapt them as s/he wishes. The author sells the distribution of the text, either in units, receiving payment each time the text is reproduced, or outright, by signing the authorial rights over to a publisher for a certain length of time. The reader, by buying a copy of the book, purchases the right to read the work but does not acquire the rights to redistribute it. The author has a right to be recognised as the author of the text, but this means recognition of the fact that s/he owns the text and produced it, not that the text relfects her point of view.
- The registration of the copyright of texts distributed via the Internet counters the notion that the internet is a purely spatial realm.
- The text separates the author from the reader "...the book divides the act of writing and the act of reading into two sides, between which there is no communication. The text thus produces a double-eclipse of the reader and the writer" (Ricoeur, 1981). The resulting separation between author, text and reader prompts the question of to what degree a text can be said to have any intentional or reflective meaning. "[as] the meanings of the text are the 'production' or 'creation' of the individual reader... there is no one correct meaning, either of the linguistic parts or of the artistic whole of the text" (Abrams, 1941).
- The notion that the meaning of a text is brought about in the process of reading - i.e. that the reader constitutes the text - contests the principles of objective and positivist research. In these paradigms the role of the researcher is to uncover the 'truth' of the object of study. This principle does not only apply to the study of inanimate objects: it is a traditional tenet of anthropological research that the researcher attempt to leave the object of enquiry unchanged.
- Contemporary research perspectives acknowledge the impossibility of conducting research without altering the meaning of what is observed. This view holds that the meaning of any situation or text does not exist prior to observation, but is inscribed in the process of research. This understanding has led to the use of reflective and 'participant-observation' methodologies that clearly convey the participatory role of the researcher.
- 'Post-paradigm' anthropology and feminist sociological research both require the researcher to account for the dynamics of the relationship between researched, researcher and results. Feminist documentary and film-making has also stressed the relationship between the observed or filmed and the producer of the text. In these paradigms the text is a contested and multiple output with a multiplicity of stakeholders. In other words: the implication for the social construction of knowledge through research is that it is a contested an relational construct.
- The chatroom is a 'space' and the dialogue is between people in it, all of whom are due the protection accorded them under the human subjects research model.
- The dialogue you have is a 'text', it's in the public domain, and therefore, aside from considerations of copyright, is available for reproduction.
The decision to disguise online activity, justified through the use of a rhetoric of 'protection' may result in furthering the unequal power relations of media production by blocking full representation of alternative media.
Conclusion: advice for internet researchers
Spatial descriptions of the internet are consistent with the Human Subjects Research model, BUT only some types of Internet use can usefully be described in spatial terms. Academic research that positions the internet as a social space containing cultural activity ripe for observation ignores the range of textual applications that the internet supports.As internet researchers, we need to develop models that acknowledge both spatial and textual understandings of the internet. Such models are required if we are to produce research that examines the complex intersection of technologies, form, genre, and content that the internet supports.
Users may be less informed about the issues involved in textual production via the internet than in print media or traditional broadcast media such as the radio or television. However, researchers cannot afford to assume that individuals engaging in cultural practices through the internet are always at more risk than those using other media.
If an individual or group has chosen to use internet media to publish their opinions then the researcher needs to consider their decision to the same degree that they would with a similar publication in traditional print media.
To maintain a research model akin to the HSR model would be to risk impeding and potentially eliminating promising research. It is not always possible, for example, to gain the consent of a large number of participants who may have changed their email address or ceased posting to a web site on which the material under research is located. This should not prevent research of textual material that they have chosen to output via the internet anymore than it would for textual products in other print or broadcast media.
We should attempt to find a way of acknowledging the hybridity of the internet, acknowledging that the texts it supports are neither virtual selves nor objects completely distinct from those who write them. A reading of the text that includes the content, form, history and researchers' response all need to be considered as part of these relations of production, and power is a central issue. These relations include, for example, statements of intention in the text about whether it is intended for publication or for consumption by a circumscribed group of people... These relations will effect how users perceive their acts of participation and production: for example, is the site like a public forum / message board, or is it more like a newsletter intended only for members of a group? These structures clearly contribute to the user's perceptions of their activity on it.
Commonly deployed spatial models of the internet appear to be seeing a resurgence through the dominant construction of the internet as a place in which human subjects act. We argue that a hybrid model of relational ethics that incorporates text, space and bodies needs to be applied to Internet research. The HSR model only has limited application, and where it is applied indiscriminately or as the 'safest' option it in fact can be unethical and not 'safe' at all.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Key points from online discussion: \
https://modules.lancs.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=22328From David Pike:
Hi Sue,
Using your "obligation to protect people" and a bit of googling about the idea of duty of care (which seemed like a good phrase) I found there's something called the Caparo Test........so with some intellectual alchemy I would say........
1) If you send/bring/encourage students, assuming no prior experience, to an place/community online/part of an environment - you have an obligation to protect
2) If you gather the students who are part of an existing network e.g. Facebook - you have an obligation to protect only within the bubble you create
3) If you cause students to create new artefacts which are displayed out on the internet you have an obligation to protect by ensuring that students know the rights they hold in relation to said 'things' (i'm thinking of art students, musicians, maketeers, programmers etc).
4) If in any of the cases above you will be working with a group who could / are considered vunerable [e.g 1 perhaps something like the definition and who is sections?] [e.g. 2 - defined as a child] you automatically have an obligation to protect
What does everyone think? Question is, how? This probably varies by technology.....
___________________________________________________________________________________
From Nafeth:
Hello David and Ayman,
I believe that users don't have to learn the technical stuff of information security terminologies to be safe. A big part of the responsibility is on the owners of the websites. One thing they can do is to exercise the 'Due Care' standard that is a the minimum and customary practice of responsible protection of information published through the website. Due care is exercised to ensure that appropriate controls are implemented . Applying this standard implies reasonable care and competence.
___________________________________________________________________________________
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