Ethical considerations for doing online or digital social research in covid times
Channel: annette markham
Date: 05/02/2021

What are some key ethical concerns of doing research in a datafied or digitally-saturated post-pandemic world? This is a question of purpose, method, as well as ethics. This is an archived recording of a keynote address  given on September 23, 2020 for the NVIVO conference on qualitative research in a changing world. This is a spoken, not written talk. There may be minor errors in content. Please see related articles below for more clarity. 

Table of Contents in video

0:00 start
05:35 Key challenges and some book recommendations
08:13 Introducing an "impact model" of ethics as method
10:46 Brief history of ethics principles
13:00 How the internet complicates traditional ethics concepts
19:23 Why "avoid the creepy factor" is better than using the word "ethics" 
20:40 Shifting from concept-driven to process-oriented ethical approaches
21:19 Thinking of methods as choices at critical junctures with ethical consequences
24:13 Ethics as scales, degrees, layers, and levels of impact
25:17 Ethics as Impact --a future oriented-approach 
27:20 Impact Arena 1: Treatment of people
28:53 Impact Arena 2: Side effects of research design
31:34 Impact Arena 3:  Use of data to create knowledge and categories 
33:14 Impact Arena 4: Future shifts / future making
35:28 Emerging premises for research in datafied and algorithmic contexts 
38:00 Competing stakeholders and constraints for ethical sensibilities
40:05 The importance of continuously asking questions, including the AOIR guidelines (see link at bottom of description)
41:20 Conclusion: why good ethics are about reflexive methods and practices 

Resources:
Markham, A. N. (2018). Afterword: Ethics as Impact—Moving from error-avoidance and concept- driven models to a future-oriented approach. Social Media + Society, 4(3), 1-12. Available from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118784504

Markham, A., Tiidenberg, K., & Herman, A. (2018). Ethics as method. Social Media + Society, 4(3). Available from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118784502

AoIR (Association of Internet Researchers) ethics guidelines https://aoir.org/ethics