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Studying cyborgs: re-examining internet studies as human subjects research

  • Debates and Perspectives
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Journal of Information Technology

Abstract

Virtual communities and social networks assume and consume more aspects of people's lives. In these evolving social spaces, the boundaries between actual and virtual reality, between living individuals and their virtual bodies, and between private and public domains are becoming ever more blurred. As a result, users and their presentations of self, as expressed through virtual bodies, are increasingly entangled. Consequently, more and more Internet users are cyborgs. For this reason, the ethical guidelines necessary for Internet research need to be revisited. We contend that the IS community has paid insufficient attention to the ethics of Internet research. To this end, we develop an understanding of issues related to online human subjects research by distinguishing between a disembodied and an entangled view of the Internet. We outline a framework to guide investigators and research ethics committees in answering a key question in the age of cyborgism: When does a proposed Internet study deal with human subjects as opposed to digital material?

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Notes

  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l97P62-PY2s

  2. Also called the ‘participatory web,’ Web 2.0 is defined by its invitation and facility for users to interact with, share and improvise on the features and content of information services using social networking sites, virtual worlds, (micro)blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, mashups, folksonomies and more.

  3. In contrast to conceptions of cyborgs as biological organisms that are enhanced by the implantation of technologies (e.g., prostheses, pace makers), a more McLuhanesque (McLuhan, 1964) notion of cyborgs that is based on a dialectic synthesis between the individual and technology such that the users’ naked senses are extended across space and time (e.g., using the cell phone as an external brain or as a device to connect to others) is adopted here as it is more appropriate in the era of social media.

  4. http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/14/beacon-backlash-continues-class-action-lawsuit-filed-gainst-facebook/; http://www.wired.com/business/2009/12/facebook-privacy-backlash/; http://www.wired.com/business/2011/06/anatomy-of-backlash/

  5. The AIS Code of Conduct can be found here: http://home.aisnet.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=15

  6. http://www.forbes.com/sites/thestreet/2012/06/13/is-facebook-lying-about-900-million-users/

  7. These committees have different names in different countries. For example, they are referred to as IRB in the United States and Research Ethics Boards in Canada.

  8. We are adopting a US-centric view of human subjects in this paper, because the US has among the most lenient provisions with regard to protecting Internet users in the developed world. We therefore expect these US definitions to serve as a common denominator for human subjects research in developed countries.

  9. The basic source in the United States is 104 Part 46 Protection of Human Subjects, US Federal Code Title 45, Section 46, 2001 (http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html).

  10. For simplicity, we somewhat stereotypically distinguish between subjects and researchers along gender lines, referring to human subjects as female and investigators as male.

  11. Social psychologist Harold Garfinkel originally proposed an experimental design that seeks to examine subjects’ reactions to violations of their commonly accepted social norms or rules.

  12. http://socialmediacollective.org/2011/07/29/the-oversharer-and-other-social-media-experiments/

  13. MUD stands for Multi-User Dungeon, a multiplayer real-time online virtual world or role-playing game. The real life players are usually called MUDders and their game representations are called characters or avatars. MOO stands for MUD object oriented. MOOs permit users to incorporate object-oriented programs in the moves they make online. LambdaMOO is the most frequently used virtual world server for running a MOO. The site also serves as a nerve center for the MOO community of players.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University & Lund University, PO Box 750333, Dallas, 75275-0333, TX, USA

    Ulrike Schultze

  2. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University, PO Box 750333, Dallas, 75275-0333, TX, USA

    Richard O Mason

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  1. Ulrike Schultze
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Schultze, U., Mason, R. Studying cyborgs: re-examining internet studies as human subjects research. J Inf Technol 27, 301–312 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2012.30

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