Re: (Possibly OT) Can I quote you?

Subject: Re: (Possibly OT) Can I quote you?
From: Kelley <kwalker2 -at- gte -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 16:22:13 -0500


At 07:36 AM 4/2/02 -0700, kcronin -at- daleen -dot- com wrote:

I guess more than an ethics question, it's an issue of legitimacy: are
opinions stated in an Internet bulletin board "quotable" as academic
research? What do you think?


Keith Cronin

While I'm still a list member I can't recall if Eric reinstated posting privileges, so I send this offlist.

Most researchers would leave your name out of it. THAT would be unethical. I did some work for someone doing research on Patriot orgs and worked with someone doing similar analysis of the discourse communities in Militia groups on USENET. The gig on the Patriots was interesting because I was only allowed to sub because I lived in a southern state. He was from the north. So, he had me sub and send him Zipped files of all the posts. In these cases, researchers are interested in discourse and social processes, not so much in what individuals have to say. As much of an individual you think you are, for a researcher, the name of the person doesn't (and shouldn't) matter in social research because we aren't studying people, but social processes. I can't think of very many social researchers who would feel it was right to use real names.

The _only_ time I've seen research that used real names was when hiding identities with pseudonyms was pointless since the research was so in-depth (ethnography) and the organization was so well known that it would be folly to expect that pseudonyms would protect people's privacy.

I've been part of some of these studies of discourse communities--as a subject. The researcher usually asks permission. It's merely a courtesy, though. For very large lists the membership shifts so frequently that it's not as if a newbie or someone who doesn't read all the posts can actually know that there's a silent observer reading all the posts or raiding the archives.

For the ins and outs of ethics and social research see "Spies Like Us". Interesting reading. I'm from a town near the one they speak of where they were so outraged at even the anonymized renderings of the community's political life that they burned an effigy of the researchers who wrote _Small Town in MAss Society_, a sociological classic.

I've seen plenty of online journalists quote what people have written in these sorts of venues and I do it myself whenever something is posted that I can use. I always ask first, however, and I don't use real names. I know a journalist who monitors hackers/information security lists and uses things people talk about as quotable material for her work but, again, she always asks first and attributes them accordingly.

R elatedly, I'm a member of a list where a lot of journalists, political opinion writers, and non-fiction authors post. These folks aren't well known to the general public, but they are well-known and relatively 'famous' in the circles they travel in. The public archives are regularly raided for what they say in a public forum, albeit most of it is quotes in venues that the ordinary reading public never reads. I'd describe it as the catty gosspiness of the New York Intellectual crowd that circulates in the Upper West side of Manahattan. :) For instance, Russ Smith of the New York Press (an "alt" rag in NYC) once quoted Katha Pollit (writes for the Nation) gossiping about Russ and his overtures to have her write for the NYPress. Others have been quoted in smaller online and print 'zines. Sometimes it's catty--look at what HE said NOW!--and other times it's serious quoting of someone whose opinion the author of the material respects.

finally, I do know of one instance when everything a list member posted was bundled up and sent to a hiring committee considering the list member for a position as an editor on an academic journal. He didn't get the job and, at any rate, a few of the committee member already _knew_ what he'd said on the two lists.


Kelley



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