Ethics and New Media

Impact on Participants

Notwithstanding their attitudes toward the institutionalization of codes, qualitative researchers who use new media of communication to conduct their research should, regardless of the research site, design, and objective, carefully examine the potential impact of their research on the experiences of the participants. Researchers should minimize or avoid altogether disruptions of existing social worlds or individuals' lives and should provide participants with informed consent whenever possible. There are three main types of research conducted through new media: textual analysis, interview research, and participant or nonparticipant observation. Most ethical issues around informed consent, privacy, and security are common to all of these research methods, yet some differences exist.

Informed Consent

Qualitative researchers doing work on new media need to be careful to avoid narrative appropriation—the stealing of personal stories. The procedure of informed consent is designed in part to avoid such a problem. For example, informed consent is not needed (although permission to reproduce copyright material might be) for the content analysis of publicly accessible websites. Research projects whose design is limited to the analysis of such easily available information are also typically exempt from institutional ethical reviews. Nevertheless, problems may arise when the intent of writers is not clear and when websites are password protected but still easily accessible. In both cases, information may be relatively easily available, but the intended audience may exclude researchers. On the other hand, individual or group interviews conducted through new media, as well as electronic ethnographies (of both the participant and nonparticipant observation variety), should always be preceded by the granting of informed consent. To be sure, exceptions to the need to receive informed consent do exist. First, as previously noted, informed consent is generally not needed for analysis of the content of websites to be available to anyone. Second, informed consent is not always needed, or even desirable, in those cases where the mere request of consent could constitute a significant disruption of naturally occurring interaction on the research site unless that research site is owned or moderated by an access-granting group or individual. Third, informed consent is generally not needed when the type of information collected is not sensitive (i.e., does concern “intimate” or “private” information) and there is no possibility of indirectly identifying its author(s).

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