November 2, 2001

Committee of Scholars Proposes Ethics Guidelines for Research in Cyberspace

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Proposed ethics guidelines for researchers who study the Internet were released last month in a preliminary report from the Association of Internet Researchers. But the report also revealed disagreements over the lengths that researchers should go to in protecting the identities of online-research participants, especially those in public chat rooms.

The report says that ethical guidelines for using human subjects in other research contexts should serve as a starting point. It states,

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