Ethical issues are becoming increasingly important in ethnographic research – you will need to consider a range of ethical problems before you start your research, as you are conducting it and after you have completed it. Here are a few things to think about:

* A presentation on ethics in ethnographic research:

* An example of an ethical protocol for research:

Codes of ethics:

For Social Science Researchers:

– British Sociological Association ‘Statement of Ethical Principles and their Application to Sociological Research’

– A site devoted to various statements and codes for Sociology ethics can be found here

– British Psychological Society ‘Ethical principles for Conducting research with Human Participants’

Computing Codes of Ethics:

The ACM Code

Some papers on ethics:

* Emancipation or ... Hanging around doesn't mean sitting on the fence! By Magnus Ramage.

"I have been considering the question of the extent to which ethnographers should intervene in their situations of study at some length through the past year. This has principally arisen from a collision between my a priori assumption that it is the duty of those with power to work towards the emancipation - or empowerment, though that word has become debased due to over-use by management consultants - of those without; and the views of ethnomethodology, which holds that such intervention is inappropriate".

* Galilean Nemesis:Notes on Video Ethics in HCI - by Bob Anderson

"These reflections were originally stimulated by the brouhaha that followed the introduction of video data into HCI's research methods in the late 1980s and early 1990s and have lain mouldering in my filing cabinet ever since. When I look at them now, I see that the same order of consideration could well be offered to illuminate or give pause for thought to many current research endeavours associated with investigations of collaborative tools and technologies such as multi-user agents, recommender systems and of course knowledge management systems. They too traffic in personal information which is not so much given as 'given off'. So in the hope that its arguments remain fresh and lively, I have rescued this Note from the oblivion which would otherwise have been its fate".

* The Ethics of Research into Invasive Technologies - by Bob Anderson

"A number of systems which have been designed to enhance the computational support for collaborative work have features which are or might be potentially invasive. This has led to a debate within the domain of CSCW concerned with the ethics of research into such systems. In this paper, one general species of argument, used both to support and deny the validity of this research, known as "consequentialism" is examined. Several variations of consequentialism are examined: pure utility arguments, superogatory arguments, and Trojan Horse arguments. None is found to be especially well suited for the structure of the arguments which need to be deployed. It is concluded that the search for a consequentialist path through the ethical maze may itself be an unfruitful line of enquiry and indeed the consequence itself of our over-focus on the technology of argument".

"Coming to terms with an environment that potentially contains active, listening agents, where images, sounds, texts, gestures are all potentially capturable and reproducible over time and space creates the need for a new way of thinking about the whole conception of Privacy than the classic image of somebody breaking into one’s files, snooping over your shoulder, or listening in on your phone calls".

Other ethics websites:

– European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies

– http://europa.eu.int/comm/european_group_ethics/index_en.htm

– http://onlineethics.org/

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