Ethical Issues of Online Communication Research

24/09/2015
Ethical Issues of Online Communication Research
ETHICAL ISSUES OF ONLINE COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

Rafael Capurro - Christoph Pingel
This paper was published in Ethics and Information Technology (2002) Vol. 4, No. 3,
p. 189-194.
Abstract
The paper addresses several ethical issues in online communication research in light of
digital ontology as well as the epistemological questions raised by the blurring
boundary between fact and theory in this field. The concept of ontology is used in a
Heideggerian sense as related to the human capacity of world construction on the basis
of the givenness of our being-in-the-world. Ethical dilemmas of Internet research thus
arise from the tension between our bodily existence and the proper object of research,
i.e. online existence. The following issues are being considered: online identity, online
language, online consent and confidentiality. We also arague that research ethics in the
US follows the utilitarian tradition, while European researchers are deontologically
oriented. A guideline of best practice in online research ethics is proposed.
Keywords
confidentiality, consent, digital ontology, epistemology, ethics, ethics of care,
Heidegger, identity, language, online communication research.
Content
Introduction
Epistemological Questions
http://www.capurro.de/onres.htm
1/12
24/09/2015
Some key ethical issues of online communication research

a) Online identity
b) Online language
c) Online consent and confidentiality
d) Online confidentiality
Prospects: US vs. European ethics of research approaches?
References
Introduction
Being human is becoming more and more a matter of being online. Our lives,
particularly our lives as researchers, and, correspondingly, our research objects and
methods, are informed and thus transformed by digital devices and particularly by
digital networks. We live in a digital environment in the sense that we look at reality
within the framework of its possibility of being digital or of its digitability. This
ontological or, to put it in Thomas Kuhn's terminology (Kuhn 1970), paradigmatic
dimension does not just concern the fact that we create digital objects and processes
or that we are able to create digital models of non-digital objects and processes but
the very possibility of a digital casting of the world or a digital ontology (Capurro
2001, Floridi 2000).
We use the concept of ontology in its Heideggerian sense as related to the
human capacity of world construction on the basis of the givenness of our being-inthe-world itself. Heidegger's terminus technicus [technical term] for this existential
givenness is Dasein (Heidegger 1977). The perception of the finite openness of our
existence allows us to produce not just new things but new world castings or
projects [Entwurf]: within such castings, natural things and processes as well as manmade ones can be understood, discovered and/or invented, and used. At the same
time, to be able to perceive the openness of our bodily existence in its tension between
birth and death makes us conscious of the relativity of human world constructions.
There is a difference, to use the Kantian terminology, between intellectus ectypus or
derivative intellect and intellectus archetypus or original intellect (Kant 1974: B 351).
According to Kant, the receptive character of embodied knowledge makes
the basis of this difference. That is: while human reason and understanding actively
originate or legislate (to use a later Kantian term) the forms of our knowledge (e.g.,
the frameworks of time and space, the categories of causality, etc.) as embodied
beings, we also depend entirely upon the material world as received through our
senses for the content of our knowledge. Hence, Kant's transcendental constructivism
is a finite one because it is bodily oriented. Similarly, in Heidegger's existential
2/12
24/09/2015
constructivism, Being itself is finite.

The body is the primordial medium of our being-in-the-world. We can take a
distance from it only in a derivative way and make it an object within, for instance, the
digital casting. The digital casting concerns our existence, i.e., the way we share the
world with others as well as, more fundamentally, the way we cast Being itself. (There
is a difference between digital ontology and digital metaphysics. From a metaphysical
point of view, the real is the digital and vice versa. To put it in Berkeley's formula: To
be, is to be digital or Esse est computari (Capurro 1999, Berkeley 1965, 62).)
Digital ontology concerns our understanding of Being. We believe that we
understand something in its being when we are able to re-make digitally. Within the
digital casting of Being we look at humans as they are online instead of embracing the
digital within the "life-world" (Husserl). The online casting pervades our lives, including
our lives as researchers. Its predominance has lead to the idea of not only displacing,
but even replacing bodily existence (Moravec 1988, Kurzweil 1999). We may call this
thinking cybergnosis, i.e., the expectation that we will be able to redeem ourselves
from our mortal condition through (digital) knowledge (Capurro 1999b).
The origins of the digital casting can be related to the Greek conception of
numbers and points as separated or abstracted (chorismos) from natural beings
(physei onta) (Heidegger 1992), and in-formed in the electromagnetic medium
(Capurro 2001, Eldred 2001).
What are the characteristics of online existence? First of all, online existence
involves a bodily abstraction which implies abstraction from bodily identity and
individuality. Secondly, online existence also entails abstraction from our situational
orientation an orientation which includes sharing time and space with others. Thirdly,
online existence is presence- as well as globally-oriented. Given the bodily abstraction
of online existence, we can also say that digital being-with-others tends to be ghostlyoriented (Capurro 1999a). These characteristics of online existence thus help sharpen
the point: ethical dilemmas of Internet research arise from the tension between the
proper object of research, i.e. online existence, and bodily existence. The borderline
between these two phenomena is interface communication itself.
Epistemological Questions
From the above, its obvious that online research faces some serious epistemological
and methodological questions. Although each research discipline has to address these
issues on its own terms, and although these questions are ethical questions only in a
derivative sense (in that we share values that have to do with truth, intersubjectivity,
3/12
24/09/2015
etc.), they nevertheless deserve being mentioned. In the abstract and a-topical space
of online communication, the questions of what exactly constitutes a) the subject
domain of a research and b) what exactly constitutes a scientific fact are becoming
radicalized. In the domain of online communication and online action or behaviour, the
wish to objectify the mind in a way that Lev Manovich described (Manovich, 2001)
so that the digital objects presumably convey a less distorted view or representation of
what somebody has on his or her mind corresponds to a blurring of the boundary
between fact and theory that derives from the use of software embodying the very
theories one wishes to verify. To give an example: while market once was a
theoretical term used to describe and make sense of what happens in the world, now
it has become impossible to observe something that cant be described in the
parameters of the latest stock market software. While we may discuss the degree in
which theory-laden software already constitutes the respective field of research, it
has to be noted that in the highly abstract and software-dependent world of online
communication and behavior, such effects cant be completely avoided.
Some Key Ethical Issues of Online Communication Research

On these premises we may be able to identify some key ethical issues of online
communication research (AOIR 2001, 2002). We argue on the basis of a tension, not
a dichotomy, between face-to-face and interface communication. Face-to-face
communication has not per se a higher degree of moral authenticity. We may lie faceto-face and tell the truth in a chat-room or vice versa
a) Online identity
We consider the concept of identity from a twofold perspective. As a metaphysical
concept, it refers to what steadily remains in its appearance. Identity in this sense is
granted, according to Aristotle, by substance (ousia) i.e. what is supporting
(hypokeimenon) changing qualities or accidents (symbebekota) and, according to
Plato, by the divine model or exemplar (idea). As an ontological concept, identity
means the possibility of projecting or casting one's life within different existential
possibilities. The second concept is a richer one since it allows us to relate to different
possibilities as such without leveling them out.
We conceive bodily identity as a metaphysical concept when we relate it, for
instance, to our genes, eye structure or fingerprints - and as far as these or other
substantial and/or accidental characteristics, including all kinds of data about our life,
hobbies, publications etc., may be digitized. With regard to identity as an ontological
4/12
24/09/2015
category, it refers to different kinds of life projects that are related but not identical.
Within each medium, the body or the digital, these projects include different
possibilities even the case of a permanent change of identity in a chat-room, for
example. I may select different kinds of identities in the digital medium that are not
identical but remain related to my bodily existence and vice versa.
When facing issues of identity, a main challenge for the ethics of online
communication research concerns the awareness of these differences between digital
identities and their bodily source, and the possible individual and social harm the
researcher may cause when categorizing and reporting data that may influence directly
or indirectly the digital and/or bodily life of people with their different life projects.
A solely metaphysical distinction between bodily and digital identity would blur
the richer view of existential identity. In particular, a simple metaphysical dichotomy
between offline and online identity may lead to unethical consequences: if we ignore the
multiple ways in which embodied persons are connected with and emotionally invested
in their online identities as part of their existential choices and projects we run the
risk of ignoring the very real harms that can follow when information about online
identities is revealed, say, in a research report that fails to anonymize the pseudonyms
used in a chatroom by specific persons. The limits of a metaphysical distinction are
clear when we consider the history of legal protection of personal data for instance in
Germany and the problems faced by such a legislation when related (!) to digitized
data collected by different private and/or political bodies with different purposes.
Combinations of digitized online data can be a threat to privacy that allows not only
governments but also private entrepreneurs to have a detailed view of individuals and
groups, their interests, desires, occupations, etc. - thus giving rise to much more
comprehensive kinds of manipulations and control than with conventional (particularly
paper-based) media.
It is also clear that after the events of September 11 the US will face serious
conflicts when applying methods of digital surveillance that may interfere, for better or
for worse, in the bodily and digital life projects of people.
To make this point another way, we can ask: What are we doing when we do
research on online identities? We may say that we are just exploring the digital
presence of human beings. But in fact we are dealing not only with them and not only
with presence as far as life projects are related to past and future, thus creating
different kinds of relations according also to the possibilities of each medium: in
addition, the merging of mass-media and the Internet into a complex digital network
creates further tensions. Researchers may be able to study mass-media users
identities and to provide the means to manipulate them for different purposes.
5/12
24/09/2015
In general, we may say that especially ethical considerations will not be free of
metaphors - quite the contrary: They can help us understand whats at stake. Michael
Froomkin (1995), in an essay on Cryptography, the Clipper Chip, and the
Constitution, described the tension between the metaphors of transportation and free
speech in the debate about cryptography, arguing that to stress the transportation
metaphor would ultimately lead to rising regularization of the Net (because cars have
to be in a certain condition to be allowed on the street) while the free speech metaphor
may lead us to a more liberal policy making. As upcoming technologies, especially
when they have far-reaching social implications, are usually described and grasped in
terms of the metaphors we find for them, and because metaphors can be (partially)
misleading, it becomes an ethical question which metaphors we emphasize.
b) Online language
Human beings are, according to Aristotle, bearers of language (zoon logon echon).
The question of language as stated by Plato in the Cratylus concerns the dichotomy
between nature and convention (physei/thesei). Aristotle represents a moderate
conventionalism as far as his thinking is based on an analysis of different uses of words;
at the same he develops a theory of definition that is concept- rather than wordoriented. The conventionalist view of language builds the basis for viewing it as an
instrument that can be used for communication. A further step is the conception of
artificial language and the idea of a universal code based on mathematical symbols as
suggested, for instance, by Leibniz. Computer programs belong, on the one hand, to
this tradition. But, as my existential orientation emphasizes, we are able, on the other
hand, to view online language as a medium in which we project our existence.
Given these possible understandings or language, it is thus clear that online
communication research may aim at an objective and/or existential analysis of online
language. It is important to see that this distinction does not coincide with the one
between online and face-to-face communication. We may indeed use language as an
instrument in a bodily-mediated dialogue and we may communicate online on the basis
of all language potentialities that are characteristic of the existential perspective.
These characteristics were analyzed in the 20th Century particularly in the
hermeneutic tradition with regard to printed text and oral speech. Online
communication is not just a mixture of both but a specific phenomenon that requires
what can be called an artificial hermeneutics (Capurro 1995, 1986, 2000).
From a hermeneutical standpoint, a main ethical challenge faced by online
communication research is the awareness of the role played by pre-understanding
and implicit knowledge for instance, when studying recorded postings in forums,
newsgroups, chat-rooms, e-mails etc. Such pre-understanding cannot be dissociated
6/12
24/09/2015
from bodily existence. But it is in the meantime also true that our bodily existence is
pervaded by digital communication devices of all kinds. Not only natural language but
particularly online communication are the bearers of human existence. This digital
reversal of the Aristotelian definition means that when doing instrument-oriented
analysis of online communication, we should make sure that our research recognizes
the limits of this approach - and bear in mind the necessity of its unmasking, in case it
does not explicitly reflect on its limits. The global and intercultural online dialogue
makes this kind of analysis particularly risky: Given the almost instant access to others
utterances, the possibility of misunderstanding due to different pre-understandings and
cultural backgrounds becomes all the more likely since there is no spatio-temporal gap
hinting to a possible distance. On a more general note, it might be said that instrumentoriented analysis of language tends to emphasize a kind of mentalism that regards
minds as containers that exchange their contents via language. This form of
mentalism can be particularly misleading in the case of an encounter with a culture that
doesnt value the containment metaphor of mind at all (cf. Peters, 1999)
c) Online consent and confidentiality
The "Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being
with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine" approved by the Council of
Europe in Oviedo 1997 states in Article 5 as a "general rule" that
An intervention in the health field may only be carried out after the person
concerned has given free and informed consent to it.
This person shall beforehand be given appropriate information as to the
purpose and nature of the intervention as well as on its consequences and
risks.
The person concerned may freely withdraw consent at any time. (Council of
Europe 1997)
The principle of informed consent is thus related not only to the human body as
research object but also to the kind of consent to be obtained, namely "free and
informed". There is no specification concerning the medium of this consent - but it is
implicitly related to a face-to-face situation. Of course, genetic tests are not
immediately comparable to online research on human subjects, but it is obvious that
the results of such tests may be digitized and analyzed within different contexts and
with different purposes as the ones included in the informed consent. At the same
time, we should be aware that a written informed request remains in many cases,
particularly if done in developing countries, a pure formality - and we can expect that
abuses will be sanctioned either in the country itself or in the original country where the
7/12
24/09/2015
company using the tests is located. This gives rise to double morality. In other words,
an international forum as well as international standards are needed together with local
control.
Beyond this borderline situation between bodily data and their digital manipulation, we
are confronted with the basic phenomenon of the fragility of human existence. What
does it mean to give a free and informed consent? It presupposes a situation in which
another person is doing something on my behalf that may have existential and, in this
case, bodily consequences. Online communication researchers may consider the
specific situation in which they should submit their research to the principle of
informed consent not only in cases where this may concern bodily data in these
cases the principle should be applied but also in cases in which their analysis
may infringe upon the bodily and/or digital existential projects of other people.
d) Online confidentiality
One of the main problems of online communication is the question of confidentiality.
The concept of trust is deeply rooted in Western metaphysics as the question
concerning the grounds of knowledge, starting with the search for archai or prima
principia. Descartes looked for a solution to modern empirical uncertainty in
subjectivity as a fundamentum inconcussum, an unquestionable and solid
foundation. Modern digital technology partly bears this heritage, particularly when it is
seen from a mathematical perspective. That is, as digital technology ultimately rests on
pure and simple binary code, it thereby grounds itself on the mathematical i.e.,
what for Descartes was the sole source of certain knowledge beyond the bare
certainty of self-existence. But, as we have seen, as online communication researchers
we are dealing with a borderline phenomenon that is situated at the interface of
mathematics, the electromagnetic medium and human existence.
We are aware that trust in oral societies was supported by different kinds of
institutions, rites, exclusions, formulas etc. This was also the case as writing became a
leading medium of human communication, particularly since the invention of printing.
Online communication has been mainly a written phenomenon, but this situation is
changing dramatically with regard multimedia. In more general terms, online
communication has brought about a renaissance of oral culture, although the Internet in
its early years has been a written medium. E-mail, forums, and chats have clearly oral
dimensions, independently of its (until now) written form. The examples of InternetTV, Internet-Radio, Internet-Telephone, Mobile-Internet, etc., make the orality of
Internet culture unmistakable.
But what, then, about online trust? The basic ethical challenge concerns the
tension between freedom and surveillance. As in the case of censorship in the printing
8/12
24/09/2015
epoch, the state aims at protecting citizens from what is supposed to be harmful to
them. Netizens are aware of new kinds of state control. While cryptography is a main
instrument for protecting online freedom in that it enforces privacy where no
convention or legal means can guarantee it, the typical netiquette attitude also
contains elements of openness, sharing, and helpfulness towards the newbies. Online
communication researchers may consider one of their greatest ethical challenges to be
the creation of an atmosphere of collaboration and mutual support as propagated, for
example, by the open source movement, which quite naturally implies sharing some of
the results with the people who were subjected to the research.
Prospects: US vs European Ethics of Research Approaches?

Europe, and particularly Germany, has a long tradition of protecting personal data. At
the same time, it has a tradition in which the power of the state is supposed to play an
important role as guarantor and provider of social equity. Both aspects have an impact
in the present and future of a European approach to an ethics of Internet research.
Researchers may be constrained by data protection laws, while at the same time the
State may ask them, particularly in critical situations, to do research that may collide
with their views of privacy and individual freedom. This may be also the case in the US
where the Freedom of Information Act plays an important role when, as in the case of
Communication Decency Act, censorship is supposed to be better than freedom.
In general terms, we may state that prima facie, research ethics in the US
follows the utilitarian tradition, while European researchers are rooted in a
deontological, particularly Kantian, paradigm. This view may be, on the one hand, at
least partially questioned particularly with regard to the bioethics debate. On the other
hand, there is a long and strong tradition of computer ethics in the US but nothing
comparable to it in Europe. CEPE and our new international society INSEIT are a
platform for starting to think about common ethical standards based on best practices.
In order to create an atmosphere of open international cooperation in our field
the tension between these two ethical poles that arise within the Western philosophical
tradition should be superseded or, at least, weakened, allowing other groups and
societies to express not only their views of what they think is useful for them but also
concerning their own values on what is supposed to be (morally) unacceptable.
The study of human actors and their actions within a global digitized network raises
similar, but not simply the same kind of questions for social researchers as in the case
of traditional empirical methodologies in general, as well as from the standards
developed by biomedical research in particular. The reason for this is that the online
9/12
24/09/2015
medium transforms basic aspects of human existence, such as identity, language,

confidentiality, that are at the core of any society and that are protected in most
countries by local law. Besides the question of creating international legal agreements
in this field, online research should seek for making explicit some basic standards of
best practice. These should include:
the respect for bodily identity as affected by research on digital identity,
the respect for the interests and values of the people subject to online research,
giving them the opportunity of an active and free cooperation ,
the unmasking of abuses with regard to the misuse of instrument-oriented analysis by
political and/or private bodies,
the creation of an atmosphere of social responsibility of online researchers as well as
of their patrons with regard to the utility and usability of their research, particularly with
regard to the weakest members of society, including whole societies as weakest
members or non-members of the online world,
online researchers should be aware of their own gender biases within their own
culture as well as with regard to the cultures that are the object of their research.
In other words, online communication research should be guided more by an ethics of
care and less by utilitarian and/or deontological premises that may lead either to a
purely instrumental or moralist view.
References
AOIR (2001). Ethics working committee - a preliminary report.
http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.html
______. (2002). Ethical decision-making and Internet research:
Recommendations from the aoir ethics working committee (draft three).
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/aoir/ethics/public/draftthree.html
Berkeley, G. (1965). The Principles of Human Knowledge. In: Philosophical
Writings. London: Macmillan.
Capurro,
R.
(2001).
Beitrge
http://www.capurro.de/digont.htm
zu
einer
digitalen
Ontologie.
Capurro, R. (2000). Hermeneutics and the Phenomenon of Information. In: D.

Mitcham Ed.: Metaphysics, Epistemology and Technology. Research in
Philosophy and Technology, Vol. 19, Amsterdam, 79-85.
10/12
24/09/2015
http://www.capurro.de/ny86.htm
Capurro, R. (1999). Ich bin ein Weltbrger aus Sinope. Vernetzung als
Lebenskunst. In: P. Bittner, J.
Informatisierung Gesellschaft,
http://www.capurro.de/fiff.htm
Woinowski (Eds.) Mensch

1-19.. Mnster: Lit Verlag.
Capurro, R. (1999a). Beyond the Digital.

Ihttp://www.capurro.de/viper.htm
Capurro, R. (1999b). Die Welt ein Traum.
http://www.capurro.de/luzern.html
Capurro, R. (1995). Leben im Informationszeitalter. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
http://www.capurro.de/leben.html
Capurro, R. (1986). Hermeneutik der Fachinformation. Freiburg/Mnchen: Alber
Verlag. http://www.capurro.de/hermeneu.html
Council of Europe (1997). Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology
and Medicine: Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. Oviedo,
4.IV.1997. European Treaty Series - Nr. 164.
Eldred,
M.
(2001).
Draft
Casting
of
Digital
Ontology.
http://www.webcom.com/artefact/dgtlon_e.html
Floridi, L. (2000). Information Ethics: On the Philosophical Foundation of
Computer Ethics.
http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~floridi/ie.htm
Froomkin, M (1995). The Metaphor is the Key: Cryptography, the Clipper Chip,
and the Constitution.
http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6095/articles/froomkin-metaphor/text.html
Heidegger, M. (1976). Sein und Zeit. 13th Ed. Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Velag.
(Engl. transl. Being and Time, J. Macquarrie, E. Robinson, Oxford 1987)
Heidegger, M. (1992). Platon: Sophistes. Frankfurt a. M. (GA 19): Klostermann
Verlag.
Kant, I. (1974). Kritik der Urteilskraft. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Kuhn, Th. S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of
11/12
24/09/2015
Chicago Press.
Kurzweil, R. (1999). The Age of Spiritual Machines. New York: Penguin.
Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Moravec, H. (1988). Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human
Intelligence. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Peters, John Durham (1999). Speaking into the Air. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Last update: August 5, 2014
Copyright 2002 by Rafael Capurro, all rights reserved. This text may be used and
shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. and international copyright
law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the
author is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or
republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the
author.
Back to Digital Library

Homepage
Research
Activities
Publications
Teaching
Video/Audio
12/12

Ethical Issues of Online Communication Research

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Ethical Issues of Online Communication Research

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

24/09/2015