What’s in a (pseudo)name? Ethical conundrums for the principles of anonymisation in social media research

Abstract

Scholars from wide-ranging disciplines are turning to social media platforms as research sites, and as platforms expand their communicative possibilities, they create more spaces for users to enact a multitude of identities. Most platforms allow users to have ‘pseudonymous’ identities; that is, they can engage in practices intended to facilitate nonidentifiable content. But pseudonymity presents a series of unique challenges to the principles of anonymisation in qualitative research. This article explores the slippery nature of dealing with pseudonymous social media users’ personally identifiable data during research, framed around my responses to four questions I was asked when I applied for ethical approval to conduct research with pseudonymous fan communities on social media. The four questions concern: (Q1) changing notions of ‘public’ and ‘private’ forms of data; (Q2) identifying underage and therefore vulnerable participants online; (Q3) changes to the processes of obtaining informed consent from social media users; and (Q4) the risks social media research might bring to those conducting it. This article concludes by calling for qualitative researchers and Ethics Review Boards (ERBs) to engage with institutional ethics review across the duration of a project, or at the very least to advocate for ongoing consent as research progresses, especially for (but certainly not limited to) research involving pseudonymous social media users. The article aims to be useful to other researchers facing similar dilemmas. Indeed, given the popularity of pseudonymity on social media and the growing penetration of platforms across global demographics, a need for ethical discussions of this kind is surely set to increase.

Groupies, Fangirls and Shippers: The Endurance of a Gender Stereotype

“…The aim of my research (conducted between 2014 and 2017) was to explore how fans of contemporary teen drama television series use social media to engage in fandoms (Gerrard, 2017; 2020; forthcoming). It intended to update literature published during feminist scholars’ ‘turn to pleasure’ in the 1980s (Hollows, 2000) to understand if popular, girlish pleasures were any less problematic four decades on.…”

The In(ter)dependencies of Mobile Online and Offline Spaces: Reflections on Methods, Practices, Ethics

“…Consequently, there are fans who take special care to separate their fan identity from other parts of their lives, for example by using different pseudonymous accounts and sometimes by fabricating an online persona (cf. Gerrard, 2017Gerrard, , 2020. In addition, fans can face criticism from within fandom spaces and risk being affected by platform crackdowns, which is especially a concern among marginalized communities who share and create sexually explicit content.…”

Methods That Move Us: Creativity and Ethics in Researching Digital Youth Cultures

“…The focus of this project -young people's opinions on socially controversial and 'risky' technologies -moved me to use highly ethical methodological approaches (given that ethical issues underpin methodological choices and vice versa (Buchanan, 2010;Gerrard, 2020)). The workshops, for example, consisted of two tasks: (1) a design-anapp activity, where young people were asked to collectively design a new secret-telling app, and (2) an art project based on PostSecret (an ongoing community art project in which people anonymously mail their secrets on a postcard to the project's founder), where young people were asked to illustrate a postcard and write about their views on anonymous secret-telling apps.…”