Summer 2024 update

After analysing our research data we have spent some time as a team reflecting on what we have learnt. Our aim in the EFRESH project is to explore some of the methodological challenges around studying online communities. One area we have considered concerns how researchers can access online communities. If a community chooses to meet in a private online space, how can researchers find it and get members’ consent to take part in a study? We interviewed other researchers working in this area to find out about their experiences. Our interviewees highlighted the importance of openness to gain the trust of community members. For instance, one researcher told us:

“[Be] as open and honest about the research and your own role as a researcher as you can. I had interviewees who were content creators on XXXXX really enthusiastic about the prospect of a serious institution like a university taking them and their work seriously. Try to understand what kind of position you might hold as a researcher and use it to extend respect towards the community you are researching.”

On the other hand, members of some online communities can be very suspicious of external interest.  As another participant told us:

“… people are very sceptical of outsiders in XXXS community for a variety of reasons. It’s a kind of like closeted community stigmatised community. So, they don’t want to engage with outsiders. And beyond that, it’s also that they’ve had a lot of experiences with media in the past that were absolutely horrible, and people would say they were academics or say they are from the media and then enter the space, collect data or collect some quotations and then present people in a very bad light online.”

Due to these difficulties, researchers might choose to conduct their research covertly, i.e. observing a community without making its members aware that they are being studied. This can avoid the problem of reluctant participants but goes against the common ethical principle of informed consent in research.

Another challenge we have focused on in the project concerns how to keep researchers safe when studying online communities. It is known that in some circumstances some members of online communities can react with hostility when aware they are being researched, and individual researchers have experienced harassment as a direct consequence of their work. Our project plan was highly motivated by a desire to identify ways to protect researchers in these kinds of situation. One team member said in a project reflection session:

“I think as a research community, we have a responsibility to keep our researchers safe and understand that there are members who are more vulnerable than others to certain kinds of harm…it’s achieving a balance of supporting people to be independent, to do their research and but also looking after them and being aware of harms that might occur to them.”

The next phase in the project is to prepare outputs to help address these challenges. One output will be a tool to help researchers think through the implications of conducting research on online communities openly or covertly – alongside other implications. Another output will be guidance for researcher safety when studying online communities; this will set out specific steps that research institutions, research supervisors/managers, and researchers can take to prevent harms to researchers or mitigate them if they do occur. We plan to share and discuss these outputs across the research community. If you would like to know more, please use this contact form to request more information.

Tags: online, online communities, responsible research and innovation, Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub