My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World
My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World
Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
Digital Copyright
Using empirical data to reason about internet research ethics
ECSCW'05 Proceedings of the ninth conference on European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Leadership in online creative collaboration
Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Research ethics in the facebook era: privacy, anonymity, and oversight
CHI '09 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance
Journal of Management Information Systems
Edits & credits: exploring integration and attribution in online creative collaboration
CHI '10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Why it works (when it works): success factors in online creative collaboration
Proceedings of the 16th ACM international conference on Supporting group work
Collaboration on Social Network Sites: Amateurs, Professionals and Celebrities
Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Coordination and beyond: social functions of groups in open content production
Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Redistributing leadership in online creative collaboration
Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Hi-index | 0.00 |
In the mid-1990s, the Internet rapidly changedfrom a venue used by a small number ofscientists to a popular phenomena affecting allaspects of life in industrialized nations. Scholars from diverse disciplines have taken aninterest in trying to understand the Internetand Internet users. However, as a variety ofresearchers have noted, guidelines for ethicalresearch on human subjects written before theInternet's growth can be difficult to extend toresearch on Internet users.In this paper, I focus on one ethicalissue: whether and to what extent to disguisematerial collected online in publishedaccounts. While some people argue thatvulnerable human subjects must always be madeanonymous in publications for their ownprotection, others argue that Internet usersdeserve credit for their creative andintellectual work. Still others argue thatmuch material available online should betreated as ``published.'' To attempt to resolvethese issues, I first review my own experiencesof disguising material in research accountsfrom 1992 to 2002. Some of the thorniestissues emerge at the boundaries betweenresearch disciplines. Furthermore, manyhumanities disciplines have not historicallyviewed what they do as human subjects research. Next, I explore what it means to do humansubjects research in the humanities. Inspiredby issues raised by colleagues in thehumanities, I argue that the traditional notionof a ``human subject'' does not adequatelycharacterize Internet users. A useful alternatemental model is proposed: Internet users areamateur artists. The Internet can be seen as aplayground for amateur artists creatingsemi-published work. I argue that thisapproach helps make some ethical dilemmaseasier to reason about, because it highlightskey novel aspects of the situation,particularly with regard to disguisingmaterial. Finally, I conclude by proposing aset of practical guidelines regardingdisguising material gathered on the Internet inpublished accounts, on a continuum from nodisguise, light disguise, moderate disguise, toheavy disguise.