Ethical Decision-Making and Internet Research: Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working Committee

Abstract

The AoIR ethics statement, developed by ethicists and researchers from 11 countries, articulates guiding questions for online research appropriate to the many disciplines—both within the social sciences and the humanities—that undertake such research. These guidelines are characterized by an ethical pluralism—one that acknowledges the legitimacy of a range of possible ethical responses to a given problem, especially as viewed from the perspectives of the diverse national and cultural traditions represented on the Web and the Net as global media. This is an excerpt of the full working document available at http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf.