Tracing controversies in hacker communities: ethical considerations for internet research

This paper reflects on the ethics of internet research on community controversies. Specifically, it focuses on controversies concerning gendered, social interaction in hacking communities. It addresses the question how internet researchers should treat and represent content that individuals controversially discussed online. While many internet sources are likewise technically public, they may yet suggest distinct privacy expectations on the part of involved individuals. In internet research, ethical decision-making regarding which online primary sources may be, e.g., referenced and quoted or require anonymisation is still ambiguous and contested. Instead of generalisable rules, the context dependence of internet research ethics has been frequently stressed. Given this ambiguity, the paper elaborates on ethical decisions and their implications by exploring the case of a controversial hackerspaces.org mailing list debate. In tracing data across different platforms, it analyses the emerging ethico-methodological challenges

Moving Beyond Mimicry: Developing Hybrid Spaces in Indian Business Schools

This article analyses the identity work of Indian management educators and scholars as they seek to establish, maintain and revise a sense of self in the context of business school globalization. We show how globalization, combined with the historical legacy of colonialism, renders Indian scholars precarious in their interactions with Western business schools. Based on a qualitative interview study, we explore how Indian business school scholars perform their identities in the context of neo-colonial relations, which are characterised by the dominance of English language and a pressure to conform to research norms set by globally-ranked journals. Drawing on postcolonial theory, our argument focuses on mimicry as a distinctive form of identity work that involves maintaining difference between Western and non-Western identities by 'Othering' Indian scholars, while simultaneously seeking to transform them. We draw attention to ambivalence within participants' accounts, which we suggest arises because the authority of Western scholarship relies on maintaining non-Western scholars in a position of alterity or 'not quite-ness'. We suggest that hybridity offers an opportunity to disrupt and question current practices of business school globalization and facilitate scholarly engagement that reflects more diverse philosophical positions and worldviews

Ethical dilemmas in researching sensitive issues online: lessons from the study of British disability dissent networks

This paper presents an unconventional approach to the resolution of the key ethical dilemmas raised by the study of politically charged personal content posted on social media. In particular, this study suggests that Internet research ethics should remain informed by the disciplinary perspectives of those who study online communities. Hence, Internet scholars must build on established ethical practices from their respective disciplines in such a way as to address these ‘human-centred’ ethical issues. A ‘medium-cloaked’ strategy towards data anonymization was adopted for this study of the comments posted on the Facebook pages of UK disability rights groups. Key themes were typically conveyed without the disclosure of personally identifiable information and direct quotes were only used if they could not be located using a search engine. The rationale for such an approach is elucidated in order to identify the limitations in the ways in which such ethical issues are dealt with in existing guidelines in this area. The paper suggests that the automatic categorization of disabled people and others experiencing disadvantage as ‘vulnerable groups’ in many of these protocols might further disempower these stakeholders through the omission of their personal stories from relevant scholarship. A more nuanced approach towards the protection of user privacy is advocated; one that allows for the use of direct quotes when it is unlikely to prove harmful to the user but also sets out to provide the maximum level of anonymity possible for those who divulge sensitive information in these semi-public spaces

Forgone, but not forgotten: Toward a theory of forgone professional identities

Through an inductive, qualitative study, I developed a process model of how people deal with professional identities they have forgone by choice or constraint. I show that, when forgone professional identities are linked to unfulfilled values, people look for ways to enact them and retain them in the self-concept. I further identify three strategies that people use to enact foregone professional identities: (1) real enactment (i.e., enacting the forgone identity through real activities and social interactions either at work or during leisure time), (2) imagined enactment (i.e., enacting the forgone identity through imagined activities and interactions, either in an alternate present or in the future), and (3) vicarious enactment (i.e., enacting the forgone identity by observing and imagining close others enacting it and internalizing these experiences). These findings expand our conceptualization of professional identity beyond identities enacted through activities and interactions that are part of formal work roles, and illuminate the key role of imagination and vicarious experiences in identity construction and maintenance