Research Ethics, Vulnerability, and Trust on the Internet

Abstract

This chapter addresses the impossible situations, decisions, and what-if imaginaries researchers are faced with daily, especially if undertaking qualitative and/or internet research and/or with vulnerable populations and/or on sensitive topics. It aligns with voices arguing that standardized procedural research ethics are inadequate, and builds on existing work in situational, practice based and feminist ethics to suggest a care based ethical practice. The key to this care based practice of research ethics lies in a particular kind of relationality. This relationality, in turn, is fed by trust and germinates empathy. The chapter works through the concepts and the phenomena of significant relations, trust, and empathy by drawing examples from my ethnographic research with a community of people, who post (semi)naked selfies of their bodies online (constituting a qualitative, internet research study of a sensitive topic, and thus arguably with a vulnerable population). I describe some of my choices and actions that seem to have worked well to build trusting, emphatic and ethical research relationships, and finish the chapter by offering some suggestions and questions that might help those trying to practice an ethics of care.