Ethnography, education and on-line research

This paper is an attempt to establish the methodological basis for carrying out ethnographies of online education communities, in particular in the Continuing Professional Development VITAL project co-ordinated by the Faculty of Education and Language Studies at The Open University www.vital.ac.uk/ A much shorter earlier draft version of this paper was given at the Qualitative Research For Web 2.0/3.0: The Next Leap! 25 & 26 March 2010 in Berlin. Organised by Merlien. The arguments and references in this paper are almost all to be found in two books 'one authored and one edited – by Professor Christine Hine of Surrey University, UK (Hine 2000; Hine 2005)

A qualitative study of stakeholders' perspectives on the social network service environment

Over two billion people are using the Internet at present, assisted by the mediating activities of software agents which deal with the diversity and complexity of information. There are, however, ethical issues due to the monitoring-and-surveillance, data mining and autonomous nature of software agents. Considering the context, this study aims to comprehend stakeholders' perspectives on the social network service environment in order to identify the main considerations for the design of software agents in social network services in the near future. Twenty-one stakeholders, belonging to three key stakeholder groups, were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy for unstandardised semi-structured e-mail interviews. The interview data were analysed using a qualitative content analysis method. It was possible to identify three main considerations for the design of software agents in social network services, which were classified into the following categories: comprehensive understanding of users' perception of privacy, user type recognition algorithms for software agent development and existing software agents enhancement

Refining the PoinTER “human firewall” pentesting framework

PurposePenetration tests have become a valuable tool in the cyber security defence strategy, in terms of detecting vulnerabilities. Although penetration testing has traditionally focused on technical aspects, the field has started to realise the importance of the human in the organisation, and the need to ensure that humans are resistant to cyber-attacks. To achieve this, some organisations “pentest” their employees, testing their resilience and ability to detect and repel human-targeted attacks. In a previous paper we reported on PoinTER (Prepare TEst Remediate), a human pentesting framework, tailored to the needs of SMEs. In this paper, we propose improvements to refine our framework. The improvements are based on a derived set of ethical principles that have been subjected to ethical scrutiny.MethodologyWe conducted a systematic literature review of academic research, a review of actual hacker techniques, industry recommendations and official body advice related to social engineering techniques. To meet our requirements to have an ethical human pentesting framework, we compiled a list of ethical principles from the research literature which we used to filter out techniques deemed unethical.FindingsDrawing on social engineering techniques from academic research, reported by the hacker community, industry recommendations and official body advice and subjecting each technique to ethical inspection, using a comprehensive list of ethical principles, we propose the refined GDPR compliant and privacy respecting PoinTER Framework. The list of ethical principles, we suggest, could also inform ethical technical pentests.OriginalityPrevious work has considered penetration testing humans, but few have produced a comprehensive framework such as PoinTER. PoinTER has been rigorously derived from multiple sources and ethically scrutinised through inspection, using a comprehensive list of ethical principles derived from the research literature

Foregrounding Morality: Encouraging Parental Media Literacy Intervention Using the TARES Test for Ethical Persuasion

In the United States, children are exposed to literally hundreds of thousands of television commercials a year and virtually every aspect of kids’ lives are replete with commercial messages. The negative effects of this exposure are well documented. Yet, there remains very little regulation or limit on advertising to children beyond that which exists for adults. Additionally, only about 1/3 of U.S. parents wish for stronger controls. This presents a challenge for media literacy scholars and practitioners. Research has shown that, when presented with information about the negative effects of commercial messages, parents are more likely to adopt some form of media literacy intervention. In this study, we test to see if framing the concept of advertising to children as being unethical (using the TARES test) will increase parents’ willingness to engage in medial literacy intervention techniques. Results show that when advertising to children is framed as being unethical, parents indicated more of a willingness to engage in concept-oriented communication as a media literacy intervention than when the negative effects of advertising is presented without framing it from an ethical perspective

Theory of Robot Communication: II. Befriending a Robot over Time

In building on theories of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Human-Robot Interaction, and Media Psychology (i.e. Theory of Affective Bonding), the current paper proposes an explanation of how over time, people experience the mediated or simulated aspects of the interaction with a social robot. In two simultaneously running loops, a more reflective process is balanced with a more affective process. If human interference is detected behind the machine, Robot-Mediated Communication commences, which basically follows CMC assumptions; if human interference remains undetected, Human-Robot Communication comes into play, holding the robot for an autonomous social actor. The more emotionally aroused a robot user is, the more likely they develop an affective relationship with what actually is a machine. The main contribution of this paper is an integration of Computer-Mediated Communication, Human-Robot Communication, and Media Psychology, outlining a full-blown theory of robot communication connected to friendship formation, accounting for communicative features, modes of processing, as well as psychophysiology.Comment: Hoorn, J. F. (2018). Theory of robot communication: II. Befriending a robot over time. arXiv:cs, 2502572(v1), 1-2