Workshop 1: Postgraduate workshop on ethics of online research
Monday 21 November 2011, 9:30am-5pm
Venue Room 1.69/1.70, Humanities Bridgeford Street Building
A postgraduate workshop organised by the Manchester Digital Media Network (MDMN) and the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC) and sponsored by methods@manchester.
The question of ethics of online research is particularly challenging for postgraduate students working on digital media. As a new social field the Internet has only recently been addressed as a specific site that requires its own rules of conduct and there is still much ambiguity as to how to treat online materials (as public or private; anonymous or identifiable; as owned by individual users or by platforms and corporations). The aim of this workshop is to familiarise postgraduate students working on the Internet and staff who supervise such projects with the emerging literature and ongoing debates on ethics and challenges of online research; to present different possible approaches to ethics; and to develop necessary skills to formulate and solve ethical issues with their own, context-specific, projects.
This full-day workshop is based on three masterclasses with leading national and international experts, and an open session where participants can discuss their own research. Participation is free but registration is required as the number of places is limited. If you are interested in participating, please contact Caitriona Devery at caitriona.devery@manchester.ac.uk
Masterclass 1
Prof Annette Markham (University of Aarthus, Denmark)
As funding sources shrink and public concerns about data privacy grow, top-down regulation of
ethical practice has become increasingly standardized (and Americanized). While this may provide
the impression that we have clear standards for ethical practice, it glosses the reality that
technologically saturated cultural contexts continue to evolve. Ethical responses in situ require
contextual integrity and inductive, flexible approaches.
In this workshop, Annette Markham will review key ethical considerations for internet researchers
and how these have shifted over the past two decades. She’ll discuss the increased regulation of
research practice, offer specific case studies that call these regulations into question, review more
case-based approaches to ethics, and open discussion for proactive measures that can help resist
top-down models for ethical practice.
Preparatory reading
Association of Internet Researchers Guidelines for Ethical Internet Research (version 2.0, working
draft by Annette Markham and the AOIR Ethics Committee)
Masterclass 2
Dr Marianne Franklin (Goldsmiths)
This session focuses on the opportunities and obligations for anyone conducting ethnographic
research on non-western and ‘atypical’ groups and communities on the web; formative and skilled
navigators of the web from its early years to present-day as the quasi-public spaces of the worldwide-web morph into the quasi-privatised ones of ‘Web 2.0' and beyond. I will highlight how
participant-observation research into ‘ethnic’ or ‘postcolonial’ online communities continues to raise
unique ethical and practical challenges for ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ researchers alike. To illustrate
some of these issues I reflect on previous research into postcolonial diasporas online as well as draw
on the experience of some research students; working with Kurdish online communities, Korean
cyber-activists, and feminist support networks. Participants are welcome to bring their own specific
conundrums to the session.
Preparatory Reading
M. I. Franklin, “'I Define My Own Identity': Pacific Articulations of ‘Race’ and ‘Culture’ on the
Internet", Ethnicities 3 (4), December 2003: 465-490.
Dong-Hyun Song, “Power struggles in Korean cyberspace and Korean cyber asylum seekers”, Cultural
Policy, Criticism, and Management Research, Issue No. 5, 2011.
Jowan Mahmod, “Designing Scripts and Performing Kurdishness in Diaspora; The online-offline
nexus”, Cultural Policy, Criticism, and Management Research, Issue No. 5, 2011.
Brock, André, Kvasny, Lynette & Hales, Kayla, “Cultural Appropriations Of Technical Capital: Black
women, weblogs, and the digital divide’, Information, Communication & Society, Vol. 13, Issue 7,
2010: 1040–1059.
Further Reading
M. I. Franklin, Postcolonial Politics, the Internet, and Everyday Life: Pacific Traversals Online,
London/New York: Routledge, 2004
Beth E. Kolko, Lisa Nakamura Lisa & G. B. Rodman (Eds), Race in Cyberspace, New York/London:
Routledge, 2000
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, London:
Zed Books