Using The Internet For Social Research

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This influences researchers in all fields across the sciences, arts and humanities and social sciences, and poses new challenges for all of us as to the purpose of our knowledge creation and how we can best educate others in our chosen fields. (Jolly and Jamieson, pg. 45)
According to Nosek, Banaji & Greenwald the three greatest ethical questions regarding the use of the internet as a tool for social research are: "absence of a researcher, uncertainty regarding adequate informed consent..., and potential loss of participant anonymity or confidentiality" (pg. 161) Using examples from ethnographic research that has already been conducted and analyzing both early and current theory on internet ethics this paper will address the above three questions. These quests are far from mutually exclusive and are not representative of the entire problem set surrounding the use of the internet as a research tool but the changes these three questions have and will continue to go through are ...

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of his or her real social circumstances. A person might misrepresent his or her age or gender for instance in order to participate or may have done so to be a part of the group or web community where the researcher is conducting his or her research.
Additionally, the question of the validity of the researcher might be hard to prove to subjects. In one article on the future legal and ethical questions of the internet one Journalist points out advantages and disadvantages of internet research on both the field of journalism and also on the individual. "In cyberspace anyone can claim to be a journalist, or at least a publisher, creating his or her own publication and ...

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