Research Ethics – Case #1

Case #1: “I am a research assistant for a project that involves studying participants in a website for a particular deviant sexuality.  The only way to study this group is to join as a member.  We made up several fake email accounts in order to make several fake membership profiles, and we sign in under these profiles to examine the profiles of the real members.  Members have begun to contact my persona.  I have found out that they get a notification if I look at their profile…”

The issues in this case are primarily issues dealing with disclosure.  The researchers are entering the community as members, which conveys some sort of identity with that community.  People become members of a group because they share something in common – in this case, sexual deviance.  Going into the community as someone looking to “study” this group without their knowledge is problamatic.  If a researcher wanted to do participant observation with an actual cultural group in the field, they would need to inform the group members what they were there for and what they planned to do with the data, and what kind of data they would be collecting.  They could not, ethically, enter a group under the guise of a full member and then collect research data for their own use – at some point the group would need to be informed about what was happening.  Here, that doesn’t happen.  They have essentially become participant observers because people are able to see that they are looking at their profile.  It is not anonymous, as they likely originally thought.  The members, therefore, are assuming that these fake profiles they created are of real people who are in the group for similar reasons that they are, and do not know that they are in fact being studied.  Once that boundary is broken and a member is able to see that this persona has been monitoring them, the researcher is no longer anonymous, and must ethically disclose what they are doing and why.  If the members were not able to see who viewed their profile, this would be different, as the researchers would not be participating in anything, just merely observing.  Since they have broken the anonymity barrier, however, the researchers have an obligation to the members to obtain their informed consent, without which the data collection cannot be ethically validated.

Lulu.com

This site allows users to self-publish their own work – be it photowork, digital media, or print.  Making the actual publication is free – the site makes it’s money off of people buying these “free” products.  In other words, you can upload your book to be published, set it all up with cover art etc., but if you actually want a physical copy you have to pay for it.  The book then becomes available on the site for anyone else to purchase (this part seems to be modeled somewhat after amazon.com).  The range of prices is about the same as actual publications, though some books are available as PDF files for lesser cost.  The business model seems to be to hook people in with the thought of having their own publication, let them see exactly what it looks like, and then make everyone pay to physically get it, like an actual publishing company (they get 20% of the profits from the author’s sales).  They also provide service packs that provide additional services for creating a better publication (these start at $350).

 This site has a niche in that it allows for mass availability of self-publications.  The creator doesn’t have to worry about distribution or finding places to copy the work; the site does all that for them.  All they do is create their work, “publish” it, set their price, and wait for buyers to find it.  It is unique because it is set up like an online publication seller – items are grouped by category and field and are able to be searched for, so that an obscure book that someone may find helpful can be easily located and purchased.

This site is really neat in that it allows people to publish things they have a lot of knowledge about without having to go through all the usual channels, which are time-consuming.  This is especially nice for aspiring authors (or artists, etc.) who now have a medium to open their work to the public while making a profit.  I think the problems come in when dealing with things that are meant to solve a problem or provide information that others may use to make decisions.  There is no way to know how accurate any of this is and what the creator’s background is.  Unlike an academic source, there is no peer-review for accuracy, which presents problems when looking at anything that is trying to provide answers.  While I’m sure many of the publications have great insights, I’m sure a lot of them also are incomplete and perhaps done by people who are not as specialized as one might hope.  On the upside, the site does allow for user ratings, so a new manual or something that is completely off-base has the potential to be called-out in a public forum.  

Analysis of Candidate Website – McCain

Information I would like to get from a candidate website:

• Major political platforms – what is his/her stance on issues? What are his/her top priorities? 
• What policies does he plan to enact?  What are his pet issues, and how would he like to reform the policies already in place?
• Federal spending plans
• Political history – where he/she has served, in what position, for how long, etc.
• Family life/history – shouldn’t play a role, but it does; won’t want to vote for a candidate who you know nothing about.  Need to know about their life outside politics to get a better conceptualization of the whole person
• Success of past policies – how successful have his/her conceptualizations been in the past, is he/she able to pass legislation
• What other trustworthy figures have  to say about the person – is he/she trusted? Are there people who feel this is a shady character, and for what reasons?
• Education (and potentially other mediating factors) – why is this person qualified to run the country? Why are they more qualified than this other person?
• Long-term plans for the country – where does he/she see us heading, how does he/she plan to get us there

My first impression of McCain’s website is that it is very busy.  There are a lot of individual boxes containing various things, and for some reason I find it hard to read.  The color scheme is very “American” – it is obviously a presidential hopeful’s website.  The site does do a good job of laying out sections for most of the points I mentioned above – there is a section about his background, a section about his platform and why he would be a good president, and a section about his stance on many different issues. It focuses a lot on his military experience, which makes sense because that is one of the big areas he has experience in that the other candidates do not.  There is a search function (by keyword), which is obviously useful for finding specific information, and also an easy box to enter your email in and subscribe to his newsletter.  There is also a specific section for people who are “undecided” which offers more information.

One of the main things he is criticized for is his age, and so he has added a number of technological aspects to the site that appeal to a younger crowd.  One of the tabs is a blog tab, where you can communicate and even compete against McCain in the NCAA brackets.  There are a number of RSS feeds, ranked by popularity, and an online community called “McCain space” that allows you to join an interactive community and create your own website in support of McCain.  All this is kept separate from the real site, however.

 I comapared this site with Hillary Clintons.  My first impression was that hers seemed less professional for some reason.  Something about the color scheme – it was a little more pastel and just didn’t convey the same sense of presidency that McCain’s did.  She does utilize technology more.  She has links to all the top fan sites, and a section at the bottom that links to other communities like facebook and myspace and flickr. 

 Websites are obviously biased to include the good and exclude the bad.  Therefore, they might not necessarily be the best tool to use when making electoral decisions.  The internet is the main source of information for the general public, but I understand why few people look at the candidate’s actual websites.  They obviously will not include anything that does not fit within their platform, and people typically want to dig underneath the surface to find out some of the shady areas of what candidates are really like.  Overall, I think candidate websites can be useful for linking supporters together and getting background information, but should not be used as the end-all-be-all source of information for electoral decisions. 

Intellectual Property

The debate over intellectual property is an interesting one.  The internet has allowed for so much more debate over ownership – what rights are afforded to the person repsonsible for creating a product.  This is most interesting in terms of music for me.  In recent years, there has been a big push by the FCC and individual record companies to punish people who are illegally downloading music.  While on the one hand, downloading music without paying is technically breaking the law, there are some considerations that need to be made.  I agree that the internet has allowed for the expansion of the music domain so that music is easily accessible for free, which may hurt the record companies some.  However, these costs cannot be that great – the majority of people downloading illegal music are teenagers downloading an individual song for a certain purpose.  They are not the people who download every album as it comes out to turn around and sell it to someone else.  I think record companies need to calm down and realize that yes, this is a problem, but it is probably not as big a problem as they are making it out to be.  I think instead of contracting the FBI to crack down on illegal downloading, the labels themselves should take the time to protect their songs against illegal downloading, like Apple has done with it’s products.  I also think they need to realize that their music was already accessible for free – anyone whose friend had a CD they wanted could easily copy it and then have it themselves, and this was never viewed as an illegal act.  Just because the Internet has made this sharing occur between strangers instead of friends are record labels freaking out about their “lost profits.”  They need to decide – either they protect their music so that no one can obtain a copy in any form other than direct purchase, or they should realize that they are setting up double-standards and adjust their models to fit the times.  Apple allows songs to be shared between a certain number of computers, to allow for the switching of machines, and after that they can no longer be played.  The technology is there to protect music, companies just need to decide if it is worth it for them to utilize them; if it’s not, they also need to back off the illegal downloading push.

Blog #10: Paper topic

I am thinking about doing something like the growing up online video we watched, but I’m not sure to what extent.  It might be interesting to just do a review of different studies that have looked at it, or to maybe enter some teen chat rooms and talk to some people directly?  I’m not sure, so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Blog #7 – Open Source

I don’t really know much about open source.  I know it is some kind of open code that allows the user to modify programs that have been purchased.  In some ways it makes sense, so the company doesn’t have to issue so many patches after so many people have complained, and that competent users can modify a program into what they need, but in other ways it is basically just like writing another program that can then be re-worked and sold as a better model by someone else.  I don’t get the benefits from a business standpoint.

 After watching the film, open source makes a little more sense to me.  I think it’s nice that people feel that it’s more important for people to have access to good software than to make money, even if it’s not the smartest business decision.  The whole open source subculture was interesting.  Those are very different people than the executives at Microsoft or Apple, who value profits above service.  I’m not sure the whole thing will catch on the way it was hoped, though.  I myself would still rather buy a program from a major software manufacturer and have a support number to call than download a program that I would have to find my own support for.  I would probably not involve myself in this community because there is not much career potential there; like it or not, people need to make money, and this movement does not allow enough for that in order to be a full-time job.  However, it would be great if I were able to download patches as soon as anyone figured out how to fix holes in the program, instead of waiting for certain programmers to fix it and have it go through all the necessary corporate channels.  It’s also great in terms of cost – everyone knows how expensive the major programs are that have basically become essentials in computing.  The only OS program I have used is Firefox, and I actually don’t like it as much as Internet Explorer – I’m not entirely sure why, there’s just something about it that I don’t like.  I do find it to be more reliable, though.  Explorer crashes a lot, and when it does I can always use Firefox.  For some reason I’m not convinced on the full switch though.  Overall, I think OS is a great idea, but with not a whole lot of practicality.  It appeals to a small subset of the computer community, but as a greater whole I feel that larger computer companies will always be more appropriate.

Frontline Video: Growing Up Online

This video was interesting, although seemed a bit stale.  There wasn’t much new insight offered – kids use of the Internet has been a pop culture issue for years now.  It was also sad to look into these kids lives.  They no longer had any contact with the outside world, and most of their social lives revolved around the Internet.  While most kids spend some time online, chatting with friends or checking facebook, I don’t think it is as all-consuming as it was for these kids.  They were sampled from a small town and a school that admittedly had very high parental involvement, making it seem likely that the kids are simply weighing the risk factors and deciding that living online is the better choice as they are less likely to get “caught.”  For me, it is sad that we are spending so much of our lives in cyberspace, but in terms of teenagers it might be safer.  Kids are interested in bad stuff and they’re gonna find some way to try things out regardless of what any parents or schools try to do.  I think if I were a parent, I would rather have my kid talking about having sex with someone on-line than actually out having sex with someone from their school.  I don’t necessarily think it is a gateway, and that actually the Internet can be used somewhat as a deterrent.  In the documentary, a bunch of kids got caught drinking because someone uploaded a video – high school students have been drinking underage at parties forever, but it is only because of things like youtube and myspace that they run a higher risk of getting caught.  These sites could be somewhat helpful then, in that the kids run the risk of anything they do winding up online, which may serve to curb some of the behavior they might otherwise have engaged in.

Blog #3

Interviewing a person older than myself produced a very different first experience with a computer.  This individual (who is around 85) did not start using computers until middle-age, and has only had one at home for about 10 years.  While she is able to use the computer fairly effectively, learning new programs and jargon is much more difficult than it is for most of those in younger generations.  Rather than growing up with new technology as a part of everyday life, she has only been around it for the latter part of her life – the majority of her life was computer-free.  This is much different from my experience.  I have almost always had access to a computer, and mostly that was at home.  Learning new software or websites or engines has been a part of my life that is natural for me now, and I do not struggle with it because it has always been a part of my life.  My interviewee on the other hand has had to learn the basics of computer usage much later in life, and having spent most of her life without them, she finds it more difficult to keep up with the changes.  She has had to completely re-learn even basic things as more and more of our lives become computerized.  For example, using a camera used to be simple and straightforward for her, but as digital cameras became the norm, she had to take something she had been using for years and convert it to the digital age, learning all the software and new features that went along with the switch.  It is interesting to think from her perspective, where half of her life was spent computer-free – it seems like it would be very difficult and a little sad to be forced into the technology era and give up all the “classic” things she grew up knowing in the past.

Blog #2

The first time I used a computer was sometime in elementary school – we had a computer lab, but I’m not sure of the exact age we started using them.  We took a computer course every year and did simple things like learning games (Treasure Mountain I think was the big one) and were taught the basics of word processing and the like.  My parents had laptops at home for work, but we got our first family computer when I was in 4th or 5th grade I think, and it was mostly used for games.  I don’t remember really using the internet until middle school when we started using it more for research and instant messaging became the thing to do.  Originally my computer usage was very basic and mostly recreational.  Now, I still use it to waste time some, but it has become a main source of information-gathering for a variety of things.  I used it to research colleges, I use it for research papers in all my classes, I look for jobs on it, I review restaurants on it, I book hotels.  The uses have become much more versatile, and obviously some of those things become necessary with age, but mainly my usage has changed because the way computers are made in general has changed.  So though I have been using computers for the vast majority of my life, I didn’t start using them the way I do now until about 10 years ago, and every year the way I use them changes a little bit more as new software and functions are discovered.

Blog #1

1. What do you know about the internet?

Hmm…I guess just the basics.  I can find stuff, research, write a very little bit of code.  I know how to send emails, use skype, AIM, blogs, search engines, academic engines, shop online.  So I know how to use it, but I probably don’t realize the full scope of it’s capacity.

2.  What do you think about the internet?

I think it can be a great tool, but that a lot of it is junk.  It’s great for wasting time but also for doing research.  It makes things much easier, especially school work, since trips to the library aren’t always necessary anymore.  It actually annoys me know when I can’t find the information I am looking for online – if a store doesn’t let you view the collection online or a restaurant doesn’t have it’s own site it’s a turn-off for me.  Sometimes I find myself saying things like “ugh, I actually have to call them?” which is not necessarily good.  The internet has a lot of plus sides in that it is easy to use and universal, but it has replaced a lot of human interaction, which is a little sad.

 3.  What do you wonder about the internet?

I wonder how much of me is out there.  I know that technically the big sites are supposed to be secure, but I also know that if people want to get my information, they probably can.  It’s a little disarming, but I guess it doesn’t really bother me too much since I don’t have anything to hide.  If someone wants to track me checking my email and facebook 10 times a day, I say go ahead - but I do wonder sometimes about whether people actually do that.  All the technical things about the internet confuse me, too.  I don’t really understand how it works, I just know how to use it.  I just accept that it’s there as a resource for me, but I don’t know anything behind it really, and that would be a useful thing to understand I think.  I also wonder how people use it.  I know what I do, but I have no concept for the people who have used the internet as a sort of substitute “friend.”  The internet comes with it’s own whole subculture, which would be interesting to understand more.