Rebecca's Research Blog

Just to remind myself that, if I’m looking at online relationships, I might want to reread Haythornthwaite on social network theory.

There seem to be a very few high-profile cases around which the discourse of Internet research ethics has been based. There’s ‘A Rape in Cyberspace’ which Julian Dibbell wrote up in Village Voice in 1993. This has all sorts of ramifications but, from the point of view of research ethics, the message is – these […]

I’m struggling with the ethics of Internet research at the moment, which is more complicated than you might think. Depending on how you conceptualise the Internet, you need to apply different forms of ethical thinking. If you view the Internet as a virtual space populated by human actors, then you need a human subject approach […]

I spoke to Robin Goodfellow the other day. He suggested: Investigating which identities are readily taken up in a FirstClass conference. Considering the role of the researcher in the co-construction of identity. Which stories are being rehearsed and which discourses are being reproduced?

I’m felling pleased with myself, as I’ve managed to knock together 5000 words, which looks like a first draft of half of my literature review. It’s full of holes, and it misses out the really difficult areas (learning theory and various discourse analysis views on identity) but I can see that it might all fit […]

Remember to consider the links between prototype theory and interpretative repertoires.

Just talked to Steve Godwin about doing participant observation on a second-year astronomy course. He had a pretty laid-back approach to the ethics of this. I suspect this is because the Mellon Project proposal went to the Student Research Project Panel as a whole, and specific elements of it weren’t explored in great detail. Steve […]