Field Research

[Claire Bowern]

A key point here is the Common Rule requirement for "intervention" in the legal definition of research - if you're observing people doing what they normally do, and not collecting personally identifiable information about them, the project doesn't come under the legal definition of research and is therefore not subject to review. See http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html for more information.
Claire (LSA Ethics committee former chair)

On Friday, January 27, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Matthew Bernius wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 7:43 PM, Chad Nilep <nilep at ilas.nagoya-u.ac.jp (mailto:nilep at ilas.nagoya-u.ac.jp)>
> wrote:
> 
> > I think that distributed emails from the list can be considered public
> > behavior, in which case you probably do not require informed consent to
> > analyze them.
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> From my own experience doing similar research, I second Chad's comment.
> 
> The general way that I've handled this with IRB in the past is to argue
> that publicness, on the internet, is tied to the requirements necessary to
> view or join the conversation. Any content that can be accessed via a
> standard search should be considered public. In the case of other forms of
> electronically mediated exchange which are not necessarily archived (such
> as chatrooms and listservs), publicness can be determined by the joining
> requirements. If, for example, there is no membership process other than
> the creation of an email address, which can be freely acquired, then the
> space could be argued to be simiiliar to any other public space. The
> "openness" of membership, combined with the explicit understanding that the
> medium in question, the mailing list, is explicitly one-to-many, makes a
> list-serve like this one more-or-less public.
> 
> On the other hand, if membership to this list was curated or there were
> additional joining requirements or any other practices that suggest a
> heightened degree of privacy, then things get a lot more muddy in terms of
> permissions.
> 
> BTW, Kathryn I see that you (or your professor) refer to this sort of work
> as "virtual" communications. I'd urge you to, in your studies, reflect on
> that term as none of the communication that takes place on this list is
> "virtual" in the commonly accepted sense -- i.e. simulated. I've found its
> much more helpful to think about it in terms of mediation.
> 
> Good luck!
> 
> - Matt
> 
> -----------------------------
> Matthew Bernius
> PhD Student | Cultural Anthropology | Cornell University |
> http://anthropology.cornell.edu
> mBernius at gMail.com | http://www.mattbernius.com | @mattBernius
> My calendar: http://bit.ly/hNWEII
> 
>