Online Research Methods & Consent

I am a doctoral candidate at Columbia University. I'm working on my dissertation proposal. I plan to do an ethnography of an online listserv in a particular area of my research interest.

The questions I have relate to getting consent from the listserv. I have consent from the listserv owner to be a member. However, membership is really open to the public. One can sign up just by submitting an email address on their website. I do not want to get consent from every participant that sends an email to the listserv. I view the listserv as a public domain. One colleague suggested I post a notice of my being online observing.

I may add to the ethnography by doing some online indepth interviews, either by posting open ended ?s to be sent back to me directly via email or by doing an interview on a medium such as AOL's IM.

Has anyone done research using these methodologies? Opinions on the consent issues?

Please email me back directly at:

drkatiern@hotmail.com

Replies:

Re:Online Research Methods & Consent, by jjones, 10/16/00

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