Top

Published in:

2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

23. Does the Institution Have a Plan for That? Researcher Safety and the Ethics of Institutional Responsibility

Authors : Ashley A. Mattheis, Ashton Kingdon

Published in: Researching Cybercrimes

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

The ethics of online research and researcher safety online are emergent concerns articulated by researchers with increasing frequency. As such, approaches to these problematics tend to take researcher-focused frames. However, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which institutions are responsible for ensuring the safety and ethical conduct of their researchers in online contexts. Taking this into consideration, this chapter outlines institutional ethical responsibility in relation to online research, with a specific focus on researcher safety including awareness, planning and support, as fundamental aspects of conducting ethical research. Such ethical considerations about conduct and safety are particularly pertinent for cybercrime researchers investigating sensitive topics including online hate crimes, criminal subcultures and violent extremism. The proposed recommendations require institutional commitments and ongoing collaboration between administrators and researchers which are essential, we believe, to successfully address both the roots and symptoms of widespread ethical challenges posed by online research.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

previous chapter The Ethics of Web Crawling and Web Scraping in Cybercrime Research: Navigating Issues of Consent, Privacy, and Other Potential Harms Associated with Automated Data Collection

next chapter Engaging with Incels: Reflexivity, Identity and the Female Cybercrime Ethnographic Researcher

Berger, J. M. (2019). Researching violent extremism: The state of play. Resolve Network.

Blee, K. (2003). Inside organized racism: Women in the Hate Movement. University of California Press.

Conway, M. (2020). Routing the extreme right: Challenges for social media platforms. The RUSI Journal, 165(1).

Coomber, R. (2002). Protecting our research subjects, our data and ourselves from respective prosecution, seizure, and summons/subpoena. Addiction Research & Theory,1(1), 1–5.

Creps, J. (2018). Creating an effective sock puppet for OSINT investigations. Available at: https://jakecreps.com/2018/11/02/sock-puppets/.

Denzin, N. K. (2018). The qualitative manifesto: A call to arms. London: Routledge.CrossRef

Douglas, D. M. (2016). Doxing: A conceptual analysis. Ethics and Information Technology,18(1), 199–210.CrossRef

Durham University. (2020). Guidance on accessing sites relating to terrorism or violent extremism. Available at: https://www.dur.ac.uk/research.innovation/governance/ethics/considerations/data/terroristmaterials/.

Ebner, J. (2020). Going dark: The secret social lives of extremists. Bloomsbury.

Ess, C. (2013). Digital media ethics. Cambridge: Polity.

Fossheim, H., & Ingreid. (2015). Internet research ethics. Available at: https://press.nordicopenaccess.no/index.php/noasp/catalog/view/3/1/9-1.

Franzke, A.S., Bechmann, A., Zimmer, M., Ess, C. & the Association of Internet Researchers (2020). Internet research: Ethical Guidelines 3.0. Available at: https://aoir.org/reports/ethics3.pdf.

Gill, P., Clemmow, C., Hetzel, F., Rottweiler, B., Salman, N., Van Der Vegt, I., Marchment, Z., Schumann, S., Zolghadriah, S., Schulten, N., Taylor, H, & Corner, E. (2020). Systematic review of mental health problems and violent extremism. The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology (online first).

Huang, H. Y., & Bashir, M. (2016). The onion router: Understanding a privacy enhancing technology community. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology,53(1), 1–10.

Hine, C. (2015). Ethnography for the Internet: Embedded, embodied and everyday. Bloomsbury.

Hogan, B. (2008). Analysing social networks via the Internet. In N. Fielding R. M. Lee, & G. Blank (Eds.), The Sage handbook of online research methods. Sage.

Hutchinson, J., Martin, F., & Sinpeng, A. (2017). Chasing ISIS: network power, distributed ethics and responsible social media research. In M. Zimmer & K. Kinder-Kurlanda (Eds.), Internet research ethics for the social age. Peter Lang.

Kopp, C., Layton, R., Gondal, I., & Sillitoe, J. (2016). Ethical considerations when using online datasets for research purposes. In R. Layton & P. A. Watters (Eds.), Automating open source intelligence: Algorithms for OSINT. Elsevier.

Kumar, S., & Cavallaro, L. (2018). Researcher self-care in emotionally demanding research: A proposed conceptual framework. Qualitative Health Research,28(4), 648–658.CrossRef

Linabary, J. R., & Corple, D. J. (2019). Privacy for whom? A feminist intervention in online research practice. Information, Communication & Society,22(10), 1447–1463.CrossRef

Lumsden, K., & Morgan, H. (2017). Media framing of trolling and online abuse: Silencing strategies, symbolic violence, and victim blaming. Feminist Media Studies,17(6), 926–940.CrossRef

Marwick, A., Blackwell, L., & Lo, K. (2016). Best practices for conducting risky research and protecting yourself from online harassment. Available at: https://datasociety.net/pubs/res/Best_Practices_for_Conducting_Risky_Research-Oct-2016.pdf.

Marwick, A., & Caplan, R. (2018). Drinking male tears: Language, the manosphere, and networked harassment. Feminist Media Studies,18(4), 543–559.CrossRef

Massanari, A. L. (2018). Rethinking research ethics, power, and the risk of visibility in the era of the “Alt-Right” gaze. Social Media & Society,1(1), 1–9.

Olsen, C. C., & LaPoe, V. (2018). Combating the digital spiral of silence: academic activists versus social media trolls. In J. R. Vickery, & T. Everbach (Eds.), Mediating misogyny: Gender, technology, and harassment. Palgrave Macmillan.

Rambukkana, N. (2019). The politics of grey data: Digital methods, intimate proximity, and research ethics for work on the “Alt-Right.” Qualitative Inquiry,25(3), 312–323.CrossRef

Reynolds, T. (2012). Ethical and legal issues surrounding academic research into online radicalisation: A UK experience. Critical Studies on Terrorism,5(3), 499–513.CrossRef

Riley, C.L. (2020). Men, behaving badly. Available at: https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2020/02/19/campus-justice-riley-day-two/content.html.

Rogers, R. (2020). Deplatforming: Following extreme internet celebrities to telegram and alternative social media. European Journal of Communication,1(1), 1.

Squire, M. (2019). Can Alt-Tech help the far right build an alternate internet? Available at: https://www.fairobserver.com/business/technology/alt-tech-far-righ.

The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE). (1995). Final report. Available at: https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/achre/.

University of Northern Iowa. (2020). IRB manual noncompliance. Available at: https://rsp.uni.edu/irb-manual-noncompliance.

Veletsianos, G. (2016). Social media in academia: Networked scholars. Routledge.

Wall, D. S., & Williams, M. L. (2013). Policing cybercrime: Networked and social media technologies and the challenges for policing. Policing and Society,23(4), 409–412.CrossRef

Winter, C. (2019). Researching jihadist propaganda: Access, interpretation, and trauma. Resolve Network.

Yamak, Z., Saunier, J., & Vercouter, L. (2018). SocksCatch: Automatic detection and grouping of sockpuppets in social media. Knowledge-Based Systems,149(1), 124–142.CrossRef

Zimmer, M. (2010). Is it ethical to harvest public Twitter accounts without consent? Available at: https://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/02/12/is-it-ethical-to-harvest-public-twitter-accounts-without-consent/.

Title: Does the Institution Have a Plan for That? Researcher Safety and the Ethics of Institutional Responsibility
Authors: Ashley A. Mattheis
Ashton Kingdon
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Researching Cybercrimes
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-74836-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-74837-1

Copyright Year: 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74837-1_23

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Premium Partner