Zusammenfassung

The work represented in this document emerges from theoretical, empirical, and field research conducted by members of the Association of Internet Researchers, including members of the AoIR Ethics Working Group. The first version of the AoIR Ethical Decision-Making document was released in 2002, after two years of international and cross-disciplinary collaboration. The document and its guidelines emerged from a series of extensive dialogues among experienced researchers facing and resolving ethical issues in internet research, philosophers, and other members of AoIR's international, interdisciplinary community. The intention was to develop guidelines from the bottom up -- i.e., out of the day-to-day practices of researchers in a wide range of disciplines, countries and contexts, in contrast to a more usual top-down approach that tries to provide a universal set of norms, principles, practices, and regulations. This approach was crucial because the enterprise of internet research is expansive -- that is, globally informed -- but also situated in innumerable locales. The 2002 document has subsequently received much use, and has been cited and used in a wide range of publications by a diverse number of disciplines. The AoIR Guidelines document has also been used by research ethics boards (REBs) and institutional review boards (IRBs) when making decisions about internet research-based protocols. This document aligns with and extends the first AoIR document. This document represents a series of considerations designed to support and inform those responsible for making decisions about the ethics of internet research. And, while primarily directed at researchers, it provides a resource for a wide audience of other stakeholders such as review boards, ethicists, and students, by providing a current discussion of important ethical issues and pertinent literature in the field.

http://aoir.org/reports/ethics2.pdf