Privacy, Lurking, and Deception/Identity Formation in Online Spaces

Garcia et al. (2009) bring up many important and interesting issues that arise when an ethnographer moves their practice to  online spaces. While the authors are specifically addressing ethnographic practice, it seems that most - if not all - of the issues they raise are applicable to research with subjects in online spaces generally. Three points stood out to me as ones I want to explore further: privacy, and lurking, and deception/identity formation.

Privacy
Depending on the site within which a researcher is conducting their study, information may seem inherently more public or private. However, this line is quite blurry, because most often people posting content to a site are writing to a specific audience, and while that audience may share this information outside of the site, the author may not have intended their content or discuorse to be analyzed. In this way, it would seem that a researcher should err on the side of privacy.

But what about sites where the subjects know there is a researcher, but become comfortable enough to interact as if the researcher were not there? I'm facing an interesting issue in my own research at the moment that makes this point particularly salient. The teachers I have been working with know that I am collecting their conversations and lessons for analysis, but they are working in a private and intimate space. They have revealed things about themselves as people and as teachers that, taken together show an array of experiences. However, I am concerned that when I write up their experiences, they may feel vulnerable, as I will have exposed their more and lelss successful moments to illustrate tthe journey each teacher took as they designed using new techniques. I have done all that the IRB asked me to do, but I'm wondering if it is enough. I am concerned that the things that they revealed in this semi-private space may seem too exposed when I write about them.

Part of my concern may stem from the way I have interacted with these teachers and their classes, which brings me to:

Lurking
While we have regular meetings via Google hangout, I am also looking in on their courses. However, while I am listed as a "teacher" in two of the three courses, I have no interaction with the students, and I can look through student work, forum conversations, gradebooks, and anything else on the site undetected. The teachers and the students have been informed that the student work and discourse will be collected, but it still feels very strange to lurk in these courses. I feel almost as creepy as the term sounds. Because of this, I've made a point to only check in periodically, and when I do, I try to engage the teachers in some kind of conversation before and after I go in, so it feels like I am having a productive discussion rather than sneaking into a classroom.

Garcia et al. Begin to address this point, but they largely leave it up to the researcher to decide how to handle the situation. When and how much lurking is acceptable? Jenkins (2009) encourages lurking in a participatory environment, but as I am not a part of these classroom communities, I am reluctant to lurk too much. This has led to a reliance on the teachers' questions and reflections on their classroom experience. Somehow I don't think I'll feel so intrusive once I am looking at the data after the courses have ended, but I'm not positive about that.

The researcher-as-lurker also brings up an interesting and important power issue. If a researcher just lurks, they know more about the participants than the participants know about them, and that puts the researcher in a powerful position of being able to analyze, characterize, and possibly manipulate the subjets. Even if they don't lurk the whole time, participants may balk at the once-hidden identity, as garcia et al. Describe in their examples.

This leads into the last point I want to explore, which is forming an online identity as a researcher.

Deception/Identity Formation
As a researcher, I have a responsibility to provide my subjects with as much information as possible to help them make an informed decision about whether or not to participate. And maybe this is where ethnography differs from other kinds of research, but it seems unethical to hide information and motives from my research subjects. Not only do I tell my research subjects about my professional experience, I also tell them bits and pieces of my personal interests so that they can relate to me a a researcher, teacher, and human being. I understood Garcia et al.'s point that we all craft our identities to a certain extent, whether we are working on or offline, but the way this point was presented made me wonder if they were implying that it is ethical to craft one's identity as a researcher. Their example of the female researcher using the username "Copperhead" made me stop and think because I can understand the motives for choosing a more aggressive and male-sounding name, but that name presents a deceptive identity that I am not sure is entirely ethical.

It seems that participants really want to know the person with whom they are working. One teacher asked me outright how old I was and how long I taught. Whe I told him these things, his reponse was that he has been teaching for 28 years and has seen a lot of fads in that time, implying that this work is one of those fad that will go away soon. At the time, I wondered if I should have asked my advisor - a 52 year old male - to be more present, but as I've thought about it, I've realized that my identity as a young innovative teacher and research have been important in shaping the kind of discourse our small community has engaged in.

These three points all intertwine, and have made me think hard about the ethics of my own research. Garcia et al., as well as others we have read, readily point out that online research is a budding practice, and the ethical implications of this kind of research are still being explored. Maybe the IRB hasn't thought about all of the implications; if that is the case, I feel it is my responsibility as a researcher to consider them.