ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies key issues in Internet research, including intrusiveness, perceived privacy, vulnerability, potential harm, informed consent, confidentiality and intellectual property rights. However, it recognizes that these are only starting points, and that Internet research raises huge ethical dilemmas concerning privacy, confidentiality, anonymity, ownership of intellectual property, vulnerability, harm, authenticity and informed consent, and what these really mean in a borderless world in which people are traceable yet never seen face-to-face, their data are tracked, recorded, aggregated, combined, stored indefinitely and interrogated without their knowledge, and where their private, even intimate, thoughts, communications and pictures are open to the public. The boundary between public and private is increasingly blurred, and the chapter raises ethical issues that occur for educational researchers. The chapter reports guidelines and principles for ethical Internet research; whilst arguing that one overriding principle is the double issue of non-maleficence and beneficence, it sets out a range of key decisions which researchers will have to take in working with Internet research.
