Ethical concerns for my research proposal…

I have thought a bit about the possible ethical concerns that present themselves with my project.  A potential cause of some ethical problems might be the fact that I will be interview an identifiable party about intimate details of their life.  Where it gets tricky though is that the person I am interviewing is my grandmother.  This makes any ethical concerns about my project harder to identify.  Since my project is closely connect to me personally, it is not possible to avoid identifying my grandmother, as her identity is central to the project.  Thus the privacy of my grandmother is much more difficult to protect.

As part of my research question, I have decided to use non-standard interviewing practices in order to gauge their effectiveness and importance in an interview project.  The method I have chosen to adopt requires me to adopt an impersonal attitude toward the interview.  This might be an ethical concern as this method  might cause confusion and social discomfort to the interviewee.  I will have to be careful to explain the method in before the interview begins, so that the discomfort to the interviewee is minimized. 

Further to the previous point, there is also a problem with my grandmother being in a vulnerable group of the population: the elderly.  She is over 90 years old and, though her mind is still good, would require extra care and consideration when I am interacting with her.  The point above about using a non-standard interview practice makes this second point a greater concern.

Finally, there is the problem that I am related to my (first) interview subject, and therefore might not be able to operate without encountering a conflict of interest.  Like it was mentioned in class, using someone for research that you have another established relationship with outside the research project can create a difficult situation.  For example, if a family secret is revealed during the interview, there is a possible conflict.  This is because if the information that is revealed is meaningful to the project, but is harmful to my family, I will not be able to able to choose whether on not to publish the information with impartially.  I would have to choose between harming my family, or harming my research.

Overall, there are some ethical concerns with my project but, fortunately, they will not be a problem for me since I am not going to seriously consider this as an academic research project (but as a personal project, I might consider it as an undertaking...)

Ethical implications of my research proposal

I was glad for the class on research ethics, as beforehand I was completely in the dark about what sorts of ethical reviews my particular research might be subject to.  I’m hoping to do a bit of a discourse analysis around using oral history as a lens through which to explore the relationship between memory and place.  I’d also like to create a practical product as a result of my research, and so I’d like to record some personal oral histories from people in Toronto about their experiences with specific places. 

Oral history generally deals with the sensitive endeavour of representing marginalized groups or individuals whose personal experiences have been excluded, for whatever reason, from dominant historical narratives.  Likewise, exploring the relationship between memory and place often traverses some sensitive emotional and ethical territory, like a municipality’s popular memory surrounding things like war memorials, graveyards, battlefields, cathedrals, prisons, and so on.  I will certainly need to be extremely careful in the wording I use around such topics, in order to be sensitive to the people whose memories I’ll be discussing. 

By extension, in the oral history/interviewing portion of my project, I will have to put even more care into the language I use and the questions I ask of my interview subjects.  Of course, discussing personal memories around certain locations will require more sensitivity than others.  An interview subject might not have a difficult time describing what it was like to live in Yorkville during the 1960s, however another person might understandably have a tougher time talking about their experience arriving at the Toronto harbor as a WWII refugee, or about landmarks significant to indigenous people that have been displaced by building projects. 

I also imagined that my project would be subject to some sort of ethics review, but it was helpful to hear Dr. Sharpe’s explanation of the various levels of risk.  From what was said, I’d classify my project as one of fairly minimal risk, so I doubt that it would be subject to an entire review board.  I was also unaware that I would have to submit an interview guide, though I still need to look into the requirements and figure out what will be involved.  Unfortunately I haven’t gotten far enough along in my project to begin planning the exact sorts of questions I will ask.

Ethics in Research

After considering our lecture topic on research ethics I have attempted to apply ethical considerations to my research topic. I completed the risk management diagram as was presented in lecture (ranking risk/damage to participants and their likelihood to inflict any sort of stress or trauma on a 1-5 scale) and have found my research project to be on the lower end of the spectrum. My research does not involve observing human participants but rather the functions of public services. Any sort of human involvement would be in an advisory role as potential patrons of a cultural center.

If I were to conduct interviews, I am not dealing with a sensitive topic or information that revealing as such may inflict any sort of emotional or mental trauma on participants. Surveys would ask what services would patrons like to see at a proposed cultural center. Do they feel current services are adequate? Where would they like to see change or improvement? I would also evaluate preexisting networks of organizations, and separate/private programs which are intended towards community development. I would ask how they feel about a possible network of organizations working together.

One issue I could see arising would be groups with difficult histories or conflict with other demographics not wanting to participate or share services. However, at this point in my research, this would be more of an overview to see whether or not a demand exists and propose potential pilot projects.
Consequences of this sort of research is that local initiatives may feel threatened by the prospect of unifying services. I imagine some may feel that joining an umbrella organization may mean they no longer have autonomy over their program or may no longer be able to meet their mandate. Funding is also an issue and if it were to come from the government some organizations may shy away or think they will be pigeonholed into what politicians believe is an ideal service. On the other hand, private organizations with donors or sponsors may fear losing operating funds. Overall, I would say the sort of issue that may arise with a project like this would be logistical and revolve around control of the program, its delivery, and content.

Why/how information?

My research question, again, is: To what extent do DIY online communities offer a viable alternative to ‘capital’ exchange of services/goods/information?

To answer the question of what difference an information perspective makes, it may be most simple to try to frame question outside this field.  From a strictly political economy perspective, my question could be answered by 1) a theoretical reading informed first by Marx and moving progressively through history to current critical ‘capital’ studies, and/or 2) by an economic measuring of displacement/loss of capital exchange by DIY online activity (i.e. $$ of capital displaced by online knitting communities in manufactured clothing purchased).  In other words, measuring dollars and cents and extrapolating accordingly.

Within the information field, a new set of derivative questions is possible.  Does the infrastructure of DIY communities impact their ability to operate outside ‘capital’ exchange (i.e. if the community is on facebook, are they opening a new kind of capital activity whilst forgoing another)?  Does engagement in online space create ‘work’ and if not, what produces capital (i.e. ads on facebook – are we outputting labour for our use of the service?  If not, what)?  Is there a net loss/gain in labour market activity due to the presence of online networks? 

These questions are inchoate and will be explored over this semester!

The iSchool: Canada’s Global Information School

I often have a hard time explaining to friends and relatives what it is we study at the iSchool, the challenge being that information is prevalent in our society nowadays and almost everyone has their own grasp on the meaning of information technologies, be it, from personal involvement in using or designing various information systems. The pervasive nature of information is well reflected at the iSchool in the sense that, there is almost no limitation in the different ways information is both interpreted and taught, this is particularly obvious when looking at the diverse backgrounds of students and professors, as well as the multidisciplinary courses and collaborative programs offered at the iSchool. 

I like to think of the faculty as, at the intersection of computer and social sciences however, this leaves out management disciplines and others that I am likely not considering while writing this. When it comes to research, due to the abundance of possible interpretations discussed above, the best phrase to describe research at the iSchool seems to be this quote I cannot currently situate: "The possibilities are endless".

iMusings

Another week has gone by, and I have finally narrowed in on a topic! Not a moment too soon, considering that the program of study is due next week… I still have a lot of work to do, in terms of refining the area I would like to focus on, but I am happy to be making progress.

I am interested in studying libraries which are community resource centers, supporting community members to borrow items which might seem outside the realm of typical library materials (including fishing rods, cake pans, etc.). In Toronto, public libraries host a variety of "non-book" materials for patrons to borrow, and increasing numbers of subscription libraries are also creating exciting spaces for people to learn, make, and share (such as the Toronto Tool Library). 

This past week in Professor Shade's INF1001 class (Knowledge and Information in Society), we discussed digital media literacy, and prepared for the class by reading a number of articles, including Sora Park's "Dimensions of Digital Media Literacy and the Relationship with Social Exclusion". Although the article engages with digital media literacy, Park also unpacks the word "literacy" as a multi-layered term, which includes both content and device literacy (not just accessing a device, but learning how to use it). Specifically, she understands the word "literacy" to mean not just accessing materials and learning decoding the meaning of content (on, for example a website), but also the ability to create and participate. The concept of creating and making is one which I think is particularly relevant to my topic, because the tools, games, and devices which libraries lend out enable community members to participate as makers - borrowing cake pans to embark on a baking projects, or borrowing a drill to initiate a home renovation project. Libraries are supporting people to not only access information, but also to become active participants in their learning processes.

Exploring topics from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives and valuing the insights of students are two aspects of the iSchool education which have been particularly beneficial to the research process for this class, Research Methods. Although I have only provided one example, similar topics and themes have been weaving in and out of all my classes, and it has been really engaging to discover connections between texts and discussions from one course to another.

 

Sources

Sora Park. (2012, February). Dimensions of Digital Media Literacy and the Relationship with Social Exclusion. Media International Australia 142: 87-100. [e-article]. http://go.galegroup.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA284323808&v=2.1&u=utoronto_main&it=r&p=ITOF&sw=w

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some benefits of researching at an iSchool

I can think of two main differences between performing research in an iSchool context versus performing research in other disciplines: namely, iSchool students are being trained to be information professionals and iSchools are necessarily interdisciplinary. By referring to a couple of suggestions that Luker (2010) mentions in her research guide, I will discuss the significance and benefits of these differences. To begin, I argue that there is an overlap between being trained as an information professional and befriending a librarian, as Luker suggests (2010), because many of the benefits achieved by wooing a librarian may be manifest by learning the skills of and acting like a librarian. For example, the iSchool provides workshops taught by librarians to teach students how to search databases like Scopus--see screenshot above. The mention of Scopus is a not so subtle transition into a discussion of the second benefit of being a student in an iSchool, more specifically, iSchool students are immersed in an environment were interdisciplinary pursuits are encouraged. I am finding this particular aspect of the iSchool helpful in the research I am doing for the SSRHC program of work assignment. To illustrate, in my research thus far I have only found a few articles of interest in Library and Information Science database and instead found a large amount of interesting interdisciplinary articles when I performed the same search in the Scopus database. In general, I think that being educated in an iSchool encourages students to think broadly and provides students with the skills necessary to research broadly.

References

Luker, K. (2010). Salsa dancing into the social sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Elsevier. (2013). Scopus. http://www-scopus-com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/results/