Negotiating the ethics of Netnography: developing an ethical approach to an online study of mother perspectives

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses ethical issues surrounding Netnography, an innovative methodology, relatively unusual in Education research. It explores the ethical approach developed for a study of UK mother perspectives on primary school homework found on open-access parenting websites, reviewing issues considered at the project’s outset and examining researcher decisions around the ethical stance. Using the concept of ‘negotiated ethics’, ethical obstacles were deliberated, to develop an appropriate ethical position and procedure which answered challenging issues arising from the methodology, research aims and particular field. Building on an existing  proposition that the internet is a hybrid of space and text, the paper reveals how this conceptualisation, accompanied by an understanding of contributors to forum interaction as a type of participant-publisher, was a prerequisite for establishing the ethical grounds. The paper recommends tailoring ethics procedures to the nuanced contexts of individual online projects, their methodologies, topics and fields.

KEYWORDS:

• Netnography
• ethics procedure
• negotiated ethics
• internet research
• primary homework
• mother perspectives
• online ethnography

Acknowledgments

With thanks to Dr Jane Medwell for her enthusiastic support of this research and for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [Grant ES/J500100/1].

Notes on contributors

Rachel Lehner-Mear

Rachel Lehner-Mear is a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham School of Education. Her professional career spans primary education and the further education sector. She has worked extensively on parent involvement programmes and is currently researching parental involvement, primary homework and maternal narratives.