Online ethnography and ethics

Public enough? Situated ethics in online ethnographic research

What does it mean to conduct ethical research in online spaces where data may be public, searchable, user-authored, persistent, and subject to licensing requirements? This seminar discusses ethical decision-making in qualitative internet research, with particular attention to online ethnography.

The first part of the seminar will focus on how existing guidelines and literature can inform and support such decisions. The second part turns to a concrete case: an online ethnographic study of Stack Overflow and Meta Stack Overflow online platforms. Through this case, we will discuss practical challenges, decisions, and compromises involved in researching large-scale online platforms where user contributions are simultaneously social interactions, licensed content, and necessary evidence for credible research. The seminar approaches ethics as a situated and ongoing research practice, discussing questions arising at different stages of the research process, from generating data to anonymizing material and quoting participants in published research.

This seminar is organized by the Committee for Good Research Practice and Ethics.

Alena Seredko staff member at Division of media production lectures at seminar.