Volume 8, Issue 2-3 - Special Issue: Ethics of Online Research Methods in Applied Linguistics, Guest Editors: Tereza Spilioti and Caroline Tagg

The longstanding tradition of the examination of language and discourse in context has not only spurred the turn to issues of context in language and new media research but it has also led to numerous methodological and analytical deliberations, for instance regarding the roles and nature of digital ethnography and the need for an adaptive, ‘mobile’ sociolinguistics. Such discussions center around social media affordances and constraints of wide distribution, multi-authorship and elusiveness of audiences which are often described with the term ‘context collapse’ (Marwick and boyd 2011; Wesch 2008). In this article, I argue that, however helpful the insights of such studies may have been for linking social media affordances and constraints with users’ communication practices, the ethical questions of where context collapse leaves the language-in-context analysts have far from been addressed. I single out certain key challenges, which I view as ethical clashes, that I experienced in connection with context collapse in my data of the social media circulation of news stories from crisis-stricken Greece. I argue that these ethical clashes are linked with context collapse processes and outcomes on the one hand and sociolinguistic contextual analysis priorities on the other hand. I put forward certain proposals for resolving these clashes arguing for a discipline-based virtue ethics that requires researcher reflexivity and phronesis.

The aim of the article is to build a bridge between assumptions about publicness and ethics in traditional (mass) media research and similar issues pertaining to research ethics in so-called new media environments. The article starts off with unpacking ‘publicness’ as defined in authoritative ethical guidelines that regulate research on (and through) media. It points to the challenges media convergence–and, particularly, the increasingly multimodal, multiauthored and multimedial content of websites–have brought to perceptions of publicness, as previously understood in mass media research. With reference to language-focused research on multilingual digital writing in such contexts, I critically engage with ethical tensions related to collecting and analysing internet data, on the one hand, and presenting and publishing data extracts from new media contexts, on the other. Drawing on modularity as a key organising principle of web design and discourse, the article proposes a modular and iterative approach to research ethics that takes into account the complex and fluid configuration of web environments and attends to the conditions of multiple authorship and multiple publics that are increasingly typical of such contexts.

Social Network Sites (SNS) have increasingly grown as platforms for users to publish and promote content (which includes videos, written texts, and images), in addition to interacting socially. While all published material both online and offline is normally protected by copyright laws, what constitutes copyrighted material on SNS can be difficult to distinguish. Moreover, users on these sites can have differing expectations of how their content is used and viewed by others, causing confusion around both the legal and ethical obligations of others when they use or cite others’ content. Knowing when to attribute content to users and when to protect user privacy is, therefore, a key issue for researchers, particularly linguists working with language data from SNS. Using three case studies, this article looks at content from SNS where applying copyright rules might be problematic: videos that have been published and subsequently removed from a site; user comments on videos published on YouTube and Facebook; and user comments on sites, which might be considered sensitive, such as adult video pages. I discuss the legal obligations in using this content, by first presenting examples where there is a clear legal requirement to cite the copyrighted work of users. I then highlight the ambiguity of copyright law and suggest ways problematic cases might be addressed, enabling the researcher to act both legally and ethically in copying and using online material. In conclusion, I argue based on these studies that attribution of publicly available content on SNS should be the default position, but that the effect of reproducing materials for academic purposes should be taken into account.

The present article addresses ethical issues and tensions that have arisen in the context of language-focused research on web-based mourning. It renders explicit the process of ethical decision-making in research practice, illustrating key aspects of a process approach to research ethics, which calls for reflection on ethical issues as an integral and dynamic part of the project (Markham and Buchanan 2015. Ethical considerations in digital research contexts. In James Wright (ed.) Encyclopedia for Social & Behavioral Sciences . Elsevier Press. 606–613; Page et al. 2014. Researching Language and Social Media: A student guide . Oxon: Routledge). In addition, the article draws attention to some vexing ethical tensions raised in research practice and, in particular, to the uses of the terms private and public in research ethics frameworks and in discipline-specific discussions. Based on Gal’s (2005. Language ideologies compared: metaphors of public/private. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1): 23–38) semiotic investigation of the private/public opposition, it is shown how the two categories are used as a language ideology of differentiation that discursively contrasts spaces and forms of emotional communication. It is argued that such metaphorical uses of the terms limit their currency in internet research on language, mourning, and death online, which tends to feature the construction and staging of a public self in semi-public contexts. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the issues raised in language-focused research on web-based mourning for research ethics as method (Markham 2004. Method as ethic, ethic as method. Journal of Information Ethics 15 (2): 37–55) and calls for the critical study of the key concepts that underlie research ethics stances as a key step in rethinking – or ‘undoing’ – ethics (Whiteman 2012. Undoing Ethics: Rethinking Practice in Online Research . London: Springer).

This article explores ethical conundrums in linguistic research on online platforms populated by ‘pick-up artists’ (PUAs), a community that learns and practices speed-seduction for short-term mating. Originally a male heterosexual community, PUAs encourage men to use manipulative strategies to select, pursue, isolate and sexually conquer women (Hall, Jeffrey A. & Melanie Canterberry. 2011. Sexism and assertive courtship strategies. Sex Roles 65(11). 840–853). Using so-called ‘field reports’ – detailed accounts of interactions with women – from Anglophone PUA forums as our data, we investigate the narrative stance devices that PUAs use to impose the game frame on their activities. Unavoidably, sampling language in an environment where risky topics are under constant discussion presents ethical dilemmas. The article focuses on how conducting research in a hostile community may influence traditional methodological decisions. Through the example of the PUA community, we discuss the vulnerability of subjects and potential harm in linguistic research, and whether anything gives the researcher the freedom to forego informed consent, especially when dealing with publicly available data in an open forum. We also address the myth of the unbiased researcher that is prevalent in contemporary social science, arguing that an analysis should benefit from the fact that the analyst inevitably takes part in the “fight to construct reality” (Latour, Bruno & Steve Woolgar. 1979. Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

This article draws on researcher vignettes to explore ethical decisions made in the process of collecting and analysing mobile messaging data as part of a team ethnographic project exploring multilingualism in superdiverse UK cities. The research involves observing key participants at work as well as recording them at home and collecting their digital interactions. The nature of ethnographic research raises ethical issues which highlight the impossibility of divorcing ethics from project decision-making. We therefore take on board a reconceptualisation of research ethics not as an external set of guidelines but as being at the core of research, driving decision-making at all steps of the process. The researcher vignettes on which we draw in exploring this process facilitate a reflexive approach and enable us to identify and address ethical issues in our research. In this article, we focus on the potential impact that digital communication technologies can have on the kinds of relationships that are possible between researchers and research participants, and on the roles that both carry out within the project. In doing so, we explore the part that digital communications play in the co-construction of social distance and closeness in research relationships. Our discussions around these issues highlight the need for an awareness not only of how our participants’ media ideologies shape their use and perceptions of digital technologies, but also how our own assumptions inform our handling of the digital data.

In recent years, researchers working within the discipline of applied linguistics and beyond have discovered stimulating opportunities to study human interaction, rituals and behaviours online. But with these opportunities come concerns for the human subjects ‘behind’ online data, most notably, their rights to privacy and freedom from harm. Applied linguists working with data from the internet therefore have a responsibility to continually scrutinise and re-evaluate the ethics of their research methods in line with fast-moving technological developments. In the past decade, an increasing number of scholars have advocated a case-based, context-sensitive approach to the issue of privacy, ethics and internet research. But the mechanisms for applying such an approach are often not made explicit, leaving researchers unsure how to proceed ethically in increasingly complex and shifting research contexts. Using a study of the Mumsnet Talk forum as a case, I show how my self-reflexive and linguistic approach, which draws on established traditions in qualitative research, has helped me to understand what many users of this forum see as normal information flows within this setting. I suggest that such a reflexive-linguistic approach is of value to internet researchers working within the applied linguistic discipline and beyond, who wish to make sensitive, informed ethical judgements that minimise the risk of harm to their participants.