2022
DOI: 10.1007/s10676-022-09663-w
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Disguising Reddit sources and the efficacy of ethical research

Abstract: Concerned researchers of online forums might implement what Bruckman (2002) referred to as disguise. Heavy disguise, for example, elides usernames and rewords quoted prose so that sources are difficult to locate via search engines. This can protect users (who might be members of vulnerable populations, including minors) from additional harms (such as harassment or additional identification). But does disguise work? I analyze 22 Reddit research reports: 3 of light disguise, using verbatim quotes, and 19 of heav… Show more

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Cited by 27 publications
(12 citation statements)
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“…This schema of topic names includes a description and examples. We provide paraphrased example posts for each category, which were drawn from a random sample of posts; we use paraphrases given the potential for re-identification when using direct quotes from social media posts (Agarwal et al, 2023;Reagle, 2022).…”
Section: Online Appendixmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This schema of topic names includes a description and examples. We provide paraphrased example posts for each category, which were drawn from a random sample of posts; we use paraphrases given the potential for re-identification when using direct quotes from social media posts (Agarwal et al, 2023;Reagle, 2022).…”
Section: Online Appendixmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Third, we cleaned the data by replacing usernames with participant numbers and removing dates of comments, subreddit links and titles, following existing guidance 26 . Finally, we paraphrased quotes that appear in this paper with the aim of capturing the meaning of the comment without it being traceable to the original user via a search engine 27 . We entered presented quotes into an online search engine and Reddit to confirm that we could not trace them back to their original source.…”
Section: Ethical Considerationsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Therefore, we consider the posts to be public, rather than private (see also Smedley & Coulson, 2021, for ethics discussions). Despite the public nature of the data, we sought to protect the anonymity of Reddit posters by slightly changing the wording of quotes and entering them on an internet search engine and the Reddit site to ensure that they cannot be traced back to the original source (Reagle, 2022). Although there are questions over analysing posts without seeking consent (e.g., Adams, 2022;Smedley & Coulson, 2021), asking for consent from thousands of individuals is not practical, and would prevent the research from taking place.…”
Section: Ethical Issuesmentioning
confidence: 99%