Researching personal information on the public web: methods and ethics
Abstract
There are many personal and social issues that are rarely discussed in public and hence are difficult to study. Recently, however, the huge uptake of blogs, forums, and social network sites has created spaces in which previously private topics are publicly discussed, giving a new opportunity for researchers investigating such topics. This article describes a range of simple techniques to access personal information relevant to social research questions and illustrates them with small case studies. It also discusses ethical considerations, concluding that the default position is almost the reverse of that for traditional social science research: the text authors should not be asked for consent nor informed of the participation of their texts. Normally, however, steps should be taken to ensure that text authors are anonymous in academic publications even when their texts and identities are already public. © SAGE Publications 2011.Citation
Wilkinson, D. and Thelwall, M. (2011) Researching personal information on the public web: methods and ethics, Social Science Computer Review, 29(4), pp. 387-401.Publisher
SAGE PublicationsJournal
Social Science Computer ReviewAdditional Links
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0894439310378979Type
Journal articleLanguage
enISSN
0894-4393EISSN
1552-8286ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1177/0894439310378979
Scopus Count
Collections
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/