[Last modified: December, 4 2024 01:04 AM]
For the last week group discussion, our topic was case three. One student would like to conduct a research with vegan activists. The first method the student would like to conduct was to join a closed vegan activists chatting group. However, this group required the students to answer several questions to be allowed to access by the administrator. If I am the anthropology ethics committee, I may suggest the student to be careful with the following possible situation. The first is, there may be a possibility that the student cannot gain access of the private group, there should be another back up plan for the student to gain access. For example, I may suggest to talk to the administrator and express the true reason and see if they would like to provide you an access. Second, as the student did not provide further information of the activists, if they are a group of people doing extreme activities such as splashing paints on arts in the museums, the student may experience struggling on reporting the activities before happening. Under some circumstances, hearing extreme activity plans expressing in uncivilised language may also cause mental issues. Finally, if this is a group of people doing positive activities, there might be concerns on if the student should get everyone in the groups’ consent before collecting chatting information. Under this situation, I will suggest the student try to reach out to individuals to get conversation with them to avoid difficulties on getting everyone’s consent.
The student has also mentioned other method to conduct in the research: viewing an Instagram account of a vegan artist who claimed herself as 18 years old. First, it is important to ensure that the vegan artist is really an 18-year-old adult. However, there will be circumstance that interviewees lie to the interviewer, therefore, proofs may required for this situation. Second, as mentioned in the class discussion, revealing a special-interest to the public, this behaviour may attract more people to pay attention on vegan activism. Sometimes there will be positive interests shown, however, sometimes there may be hate generated during this situation. As a public Instagram account, the student may need to consider how to protect the privacy of the interviewee to avoid the artist been recognized later after the research has been done.