the ground. Although volumes are dedicated to a wide variety of issues
within research practice, ethics tends to be overlooked. As
sociologists we must consider whether there is a reason for this.
Writing on ethics is surely one of the least popular activities a
sociologist can do, for it is a subject which carries with it an aura
of moralising which sits uncomfortably with us. After all, we all, as
sociologists and researchers, have clear codes of what constitutes
ethical behaviour to which we all adhere. This work is not, therefore,
an attempt to describe a moral platform but to consider internet
research through the lens of established paradigms in social research.
Of late there has been a rising interest in what has come to be
referred to as online ethnography. This is considered to be a variant
of traditional ethnomethodological techniques, utilising a spectrum of
observational and other qualitative methods to examine the ways in
which meaning is constructed in online environments and gleans much of
its’ analytical framework from derivations of conversation analysis.
This work considers a slightly different variant of this in looking at
the applicability to studies of internet interaction of the model of
research pursued by Erving Goffman. In "Behaviour in Public
Places"(1963) and "Relations in Public"(1971), Goffman’s concern is
with social relationships, social order and public life. His analysis
centres on the complex interrelation between the public and the
private, which is used here to illuminate the nature and forms of
online interaction. The questions which I hope to use Goffman’s
analysis to open up for debate are those which are fundamental to the
use of internet media in any research context. Can we justifiably
regard online interactions on bulletin boards, mailing lists and in
chat rooms as "public status" or do they constitute, as others may
argue, a form of private conversation which is embedded within a public
space? Or does the fact of private conversations occurring constitute
these arenas as private spaces into which we, as researchers, are
intruding? What are the natures and forms of intrusion online? And
finally, and most significantly, what is the status of text in a world
where the self is invested in the act of textual creation and no other?
These issues clearly have considerable ramifications for a
consideration of what would constitute a code of ethics in the age of
information, and the establishment of such a code is particularly
pressing now, when debate on the nature and forms of electronic life,
in both on and off-line arenas, increasingly takes its cue from a moral
panic over privacy and intrusion in the electronic age.
Firstly, however, we need to examine some contextual and theoretical
considerations concerning the applicability of the use of a Goffmanian
framework of analysis to online interaction. The key distinguishing
feature of online behaviour is that it occurs solely through text and
the exchange of text. Thus all "fronts", "settings" and "vehicles for
conveying signs" of self can only be that which can be rendered in
text. This is, some may argue, a fundamentally different proposition
from the forms of embodied communication and intercorporeal self
production (Crossley, 1995) which are investigated by Goffman. For
Goffman, like Austin, language (speech) is performative, which is to
say, it does something. "Each utterance presupposes, and contributes to
the presuppositions of, a jointly inhabitable mental world"(Goffman,
1983). The truth of this assertion is nowhere more evident than in the
case of online environments where utterances are all we can use to
produce self. Yet in "Relations in Public"(1971), for example, language
is given no privileged status as a means of constructing reality.
Rather it is grouped along with embodied acts as a form of
communicative or social ritual, one which reflexively affirms/creates
social orders and relationships. However, the specific conception of
speech as a form of ritual act is precisely what makes Goffman’s
perspective so valuable to a consideration of internet communication,
for this new arena raises serious questions about the nature of textual
communication and issues a challenge to old ways of thinking.
We are accustomed, howsoever erroneously (Foucault, 1979) to regarding
written language as the product of a single autonomous author. Writing
is privileged within Western culture as a an expression of, rather than
a constitution of, a single conscious self, as the views, opinions,
subj ectivity and experiences of a person. Thus we tend to see text as
autonomous, produced in isolation and on a conscious level, apart from
the co-ordination of interaction. As Giddens contends, textual creation
and interpretation "occurs without certain elements of the mutual
knowledge involved in co-presence within a setting, and without the
co-ordinated monitoring which co-present individuals carry on as part
of on-going talk"(1990: p.100). In short then, texts are located within
a realm defined by autonomy and distance from the mechanics of
co-present production of self. It is this conception that textual
interaction in electronic environments challenges and it does so
through forcing a redefinition of key elements in the debate, namely
those of co-presence, of means of co-ordination, and of producing self.
In online environments and in considerations of the nature of
cyberspace the self is systematically problematised. It has become an
article of faith amongst cyberspace commentators that the cyber-self is
an infinitely flexible creation of an autonomous individual. From the
concealment of aspects of stigmatised identity, through to the idea of
gender as an elective, through postmodernist fantasies of the
elimination of the embodied–self and a retreat into cyberspace, the
recurring theme is that of agency in the production of online selves.
In accounts of internet interaction the self is seen as an article of
individual genius, the creation solely of its’ controller, a creature
apart from and uninfluenced by the social world. This stance, then,
depends upon a philosophical commitment to a transcendent self, a
commitment which is outside the remit of an ethnographical perspective.
In Goffman’s terms the self may be seen as a reflexive constitution by
and of the social world. The cyber-self, no less than its embodied
counterpart, may be argued to be produced through ritual, through the
practices and relations which constitute the intersubjective fabric of
the online social world. "Self.." argues Goffman " is not an entity
half concealed behind events, but a changeable formula for managing
oneself during them" (1974:573). It is "a code that makes sense out
of…the individual’s activities and provides a basis for organizing
them" (1971:366). If this is so in everyday life, it can b e no less
true of interaction in online environments. It is simply that the
signifying resources available to a particular construction and
presentation of self are qualitatively different.
In "Relations in Public"(1971) Goffman delineates eight areas or
territories of the self, which we attempt to control in interaction
with others. These territories range from the body itself and its
covering (the sheath), through personal possessions, to the information
preserve, the set of facts about ourselves, biographical details and so
forth which we reveal or conceal according to the situation. It is
through control of these territories, the placement of individuals
within the spaces of the territories in relation to the self, that we
define our relations to others, the social world formed out of the
nexus of these relations, and therefore ourselves. What emerges from
the relocation of social interaction in the online environment is a
curious tension between intensification of control over the territories
of the self and its dissolution.
On the one hand we can attempt to present self in any terms of our
choosing, and the lack of visible evidence and of biographical and
situational information increases the chances of "passing", diminishing
the potential for a contradiction of self claims. We gain control over
our information preserves in this process. Yet even here one’s gain is
another’s loss, as aspects of identity and self claims may be
appropriated by others. Sherri Turkle (1986), for example, has spoken
of the profound sense of unease she felt upon being confronted with an
avatar which carried her name, her sense that an aspect of herself had
been reified and removed from her.
Moreover, it can be argued that at the same time we lose control over
the dissemination of the self we present. It is the conversational
preserve, which Goffman defines as including "the right of a set of
individuals once engaged in talk to have their circle protected from
entrance and overhearing by others" (1971:64) which is most violated in
this. The offence of overhearing is, in Goffman’s scheme, that of
encroachment, of taking from an individual information not intended to
be overheard, the penetration of a territory defined as own by the
speaker, and the defilement of same through the process of intrusion.
Thus we have arranged the elements of Goffman’s analysis which are of
most application to the analysis of online interaction, namely, the
territories of self; the notion of self as an intersubjective
construction of social interaction; public and private spaces as the
production of interaction; ritual as social reality; and interaction as
ritual. The question to which we now turn is that of the implications
of this stance for the ethics of social research online. Our starting
point must be a consideration of the status of online interaction,
whether as public or private. Whether internet communicative forms are
regarded as public or as private clearly has considerable ramifications
for how we may treat the wealth of sociological "data" which scrolls
before our eyes when we log on. Here it is the problematic notion of
text which must be anatomised. If we treat online texts, whether on web
sites, distributed through mailing lists, or as exchanges in chat rooms
as texts per se, then it is evident that our only responsibilities as
researchers lie in issues of intellectual property rights. However, if
these texts are seen as interaction then the situation is somewhat
different. In seeing textual production online as a form of self
presentation and production which occurs within co-present,
co-ordinated spaces of interaction we divorce the text from the
subjectivity of the "author", aligning it instead as interactive
ritual. Thus we are considering, not the expression of individual
personalities, but the strategic means and forms of interaction within
the media. The data is therefore, by implication, a product not of
individual agency but of social ritual, in much the same manner as the
pedestrian behaviour studied by Goffman may be considered to be
separate from the will of any specific observed individual. In this
instance, as Homan (1991:46) has argued, the data takes the form of an
insight which is not peculiar to any specific individual and therefore
does not attach a need to obtain informed consent from the participants.
If we are observing interactional ritual in this way, does it then
follow that we may liken our research online to the position of a
researcher who stands in a public place and observes the behaviour of
those within it? Sociology has long accepted that public behaviours are
a legitimate object for research insofar as such research focuses upon
the forms of interaction, rather than the acts of any individual. Hence
it is acceptable to observe the behaviour of people at town meetings,
in churches, pedestrian behaviour in the streets and shops without
needing to obtain informed consent. The reasons for this may partly
reside in the difficulty of obtaining informed consent in these
situations (a difficulty which is not applicable to online
environments, where an obvious means to communicate the fact of a study
in progress readily presents itself), but mainly centre on the lack of
necessity for it. Thus behaviour in public places is a legitimate
object of scrutiny for the social researcher, whereas that in private
is not, unless consent is given.
As Homan(1991)has argued, whether a space is public or private is
always relative to the definitions of those who occupy it and this is
particularly true of internet communities, where ther e are/were no
pre-existing cultural understandings of the nature of the media to
appeal to or be guided by in defining the situation. Two areas may be
considered to be revealing in this context, the views of the users as
expressed through the conceptual and verbal apparatuses of the
environments, and the actions of the internet community in the case of
"lurkers".
The ways in which electronic environments are described constitute a
conceptual apparatus, a tool for defining the spaces which we occupy
when online. As Correll (1997)demonstrated in the case of the Lesbian
cyber cafe upon which she conducted an ethnographic study, the creation
and maintenance of physical spaces is one of the key rituals in the
organisation of interaction. In a space where setting can only be
evoked textually, patrons of the cyber cafe used descriptions of
physical artefacts to organise the spaces of interaction, to define
relationships to each other and create/ maintain a social order(Correll
:1997). When we consider this in relation to spaces of online
interaction in general it can be seen that descriptions of place serve
to reflexively create arenas as public spaces. The diffusion of
references to town halls, town pumps, villages and cafes all give ample
testimony to an overriding definition of electronic forums as public
status. These spaces, then, are communal spaces, and this implies that
the interaction which occurs within them is also public and thus falls
within the remit of an observational sociology which is directed at
understanding behaviour in public spaces, whether on or off-line.
This idea is further supported by the actions of community participants
with regard to "lurkers" or non-contributors. Lurking is at the very
least tolerated in online environments and as Correll (1997) has
pointed out lurkers often receive a warm welcome from communities when
changing status to participant and acknowledging their previous
activities. Such a tolerance may only be regarded as intelligible from
the stance that internet interactions occur within a public arena and
are therefore matters for public consumption. If we imagine an
interaction in the offline world where one party listened attentively
but did not make his/her presence known to the others taking part, we
can only construe this in terms of "eavesdropping&quo t;. Th is
definition would be contingent upon our understanding of the
conversation as being private and therefore of the information being
divulged as the preserve only of those co-present when it was revealed.
However, this comparison reveals a problem, namely the definition of
co-presence as applied to internet communities. Although real time
interactions over IRC must be exempted from this, since there is a
temporal dimension involved in communication through that media, on
mailing lists, web sites and to some extent in MUDs and on bulletin
boards, the community to which we address ourselves is one that extends
beyond the confines of the immediately co-present. Our posts to a BBS
for example, may be replied to hours or days after we have produced
them. We address ourselves in these environments, therefore, to the
community as a whole, rather than those logged in at the time. A
researcher may be a part of this community, whether as a researcher or
simply in his/her own right as an individual and is thus amongst the
addressed in receiving this ritual of interaction.
However, it must be acknowledged that, just as Goffman saw private
spaces as existing within public ones, so in online spaces individuals
can delineate a private arena into which others transgress at their
peril. Through an exposition of the rituals and procedures by which
public spaces may be transformed into private ones, Goffman demon
strates that public and private are far from monolithic definitions to
guide action. Rather all such definitions are locally produced and are
therefore relative to the individual communal structures within which
they are rendered meaningful. In online interaction it is acknowledged
that some spaces are private to the specific community of users. Thus
Mitra has referred to online ghettos and the gradual fracturing of
internet life into multiple communities which share little in terms of
a common culture or over-riding definition of themselves as
"Netizens"(Hauben, 1997). Moreover, and to complicate matters,
Correll’s research has indicated that the use of public forums for
"private" engagements is widespread, with individuals often "breaking
off" to form enclaves of private conversation. So how do we, as
researchers, distinguish between interactions which are intended for
the entire community of Net users, to which we might with validity be
said to belong; those focused on a specific community, such as the
ethnic groups studied by Mitra; and those directed at the maintenance
of a private space between individuals? Only an engagement with the
frameworks of meaning and relevance of the individual communities as
revealed through the forms and rituals of interaction can yield an
understanding of these issues.
The above discussion, I hope, exposes some of the complexities surround
ing the issue of electronic interaction online and points the way to a
discussion of the key issues which we, as researchers, face when
venturing online. As always with matters of such complexity, any
discussion inevitably raises more questions than it answers. Can the
sociological researcher who participates in an electronic community
leave his/her sociological subjectivity behind, or is, as Homan has
suggested, the condition of being a sociologist an ontological state
which cannot be divorced from the self of the researcher? How can we
have an informed and informing ethnomethodological account of
cyberspace when it itself is distinguished by a schism between identity
and avatar? Who or what can give informed consent to participation in
research in a world where an adult presenting avatar may be the
construct of a child? Upon what terms and with reference to what means
are online selves produced? Such questions have no easy answers, for
the nature of online life is such that many of the main tenets of
social life are, if not undermined at least rendered problematic and
therefore available for reinterpretation. These are, however, issues
which cry out for debate if sociology is to acquire a meaningful and
informed understanding of social life online. If this article has
sketched out a framework for the consideration of these issues and the
resources available for their discussion, it has done what I intended."
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