Paper Short Abstract:

Integrating the perspectives of digital ethnography and Critical Data Studies (CDS), we propose a concept for digital research ethics based on partiality, care, and the recognition of vulnerability, interdependence, and distributed responsibility.

Paper Abstract:

Digital fields confront us with a manifold of ethical challenges concerning the research process as well as representation and dissemination, not only because of ephemerality of digital data but also regarding fluidity and opacity of interests of research participants. To tackle these issues, I want to present a concept for digital research ethics developed by Paula Helm, Martina Klausner and me that integrates the perspectives of digital ethnography and Critical Data Studies (CDS). Examining the methodological and ethical debates in digital ethnography through the lens of Critical Data Studies and applying feminist ethics to digital research, we propose an approach that moves beyond individualized notions of ethics, situating normative considerations within the sociopolitical conditions in which they are to be realized. We advocate for an ethics grounded in both the researcher’s positionality, as emphasized in anthropology, and a critical awareness of digital infrastructures. Recognizing the conditions under which ethical subjects emerge, we propose a care ethics perspective that is rooted in vulnerability and interdependence and acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in fully accounting for our actions. We elaborate on the different notions and implications of partiality as an ethical prerequisite and a context-sensitive reinterpretation of the principle of “doing no harm” to develop an empirically saturated ethics on the micro level, which we understand to be enmeshed in larger political-economic conditions. In this context, we propose to expand digital research ethics as a process involving the concept of distributed responsibility of researchers, research participants, platform providers, user rights regulators, and algorithms.