Comments on: #Adderall: Positionality and Ethics in Social Media Research

By: Taz Karim

Taz Karim — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:40:20 +0000

Hi Edwin, gwynwas, thank you so much for your thoughtful comments. You are correct – this twitter project was related to my dissertation topic but was completed as a part of the CHI fellowship. My dissertation is based on data from traditional interviews and participant observation. However, I think having both experiences was what caused me to think more deeply about these questions in the first place – what is my role as a researcher? Who are my informants? What kind of relationship am I required to have with them in order to complete my research ethically and soundly? And yes, I definitely agree that tweets are published documents but the fact that understanding this didn’t prevent me from feeling uneasy about the situation signals to me that this relationship is not as clear cut as I once thought and needs to be scrutinized further (even if only to bring me back to your initial conclusion that Tweeters are not informants). In terms of my actual dissertation research and its application in higher education – you can read a piece I wrote for the Anthropologies Project earlier this year which might give you a better idea of my thoughts on the subject:

http://www.anthropologiesproject.org/2013/01/passing-with-pills-redefining.html

I would be happy to elaborate on my research in a future post – perhaps one on the ethics of contemporary drug ethnography? Otherwise, feel free to email me to continue the discussion.

By: gwynwas (@gwynwas)

gwynwas (@gwynwas) — Sun, 12 May 2013 16:30:56 +0000

Great, thoughtful article. Goes to show how social media research (like anything involving social media) can get messy very quickly.

Just one question. If you are accessing publicly published data (Twitter). Are the publishers informants?

I would argue they are not, especially now that you are using an anonymous method to collect.

I think an informant-researcher relationship is just that, there is some kind of mutual communication. Accessing a published document on the other hand is not an informant relationship, IMHO.

By: edwinschmitt

edwinschmitt — Fri, 10 May 2013 02:10:28 +0000

Hi Taz, there are so many interesting things going on in your post and in your research. In particular is the issue of positionality that you raise. In fact it seems like you are now in a perfect position to empirically demonstrate whether or not your informants do change their behavior once they know you are observing them. I assume you talked about this at the CHI meeting, but I’d be curious to hear more of your thoughts on that as you leave the question somewhat open in your post. It seems this has been a long standing methodological question in anthropology. Doing participant observation in rural villages, I always assume that my presence is noted (particularly because I come from a different race, ethnicity and nationality than my informants) and have to assume that it has an influence on some everyday practices and performances. The typical argument is that through rapport building and actual participation in those practices and performances, people become used to your presence and return to their normal routine. I’m quite skeptical about whether we can safely make that assumption. I find human beings are dynamic and adaptive (although that can be a no-no word in some circles), meaning that once a new feature enters their daily life certain things will change and others will stay the same, but we never “return to our normal routine” whatever that is supposed to be. It seems like you are in an interesting position to clearly engage with these methodological issues, yet your situation is slightly more complicated, because while you do tweet about adderall, I assume you do not tweet about using adderall, so your level of participation is a bit complicated.

My second thought is a bit more specific to your research but touches on the ethical question you raise. So once the informant who had a negative reaction to your observation tweeted about your presence you “quickly sent her a message apologizing and trying to clarify the intent of my project”. I’m curious how you described the intent of your project to that informant for two reasons. 1) As your twitter project is only tangentially related to a much larger question about adderall usage among college students, the intent of your project as portrayed in this post and what I read on your website was slightly different. This may be a big chunk to get into in a comment, but just as a suggestion maybe you could give us the 30-second elevator test at the beginning of the next post. 2) I’m wondering if you see the intent/implications of your project as having an applied aspect. If so, have you tweeted about that and what have been the reactions from those informants you favorited.

Just a final word, more of a reflection really, I remember seeing the rise of adderall usage among friends during my undergrad starting in 2001. We all knew what adderall was before that, but it is definitely around 2001 and 2002 that I started hearing classmates saying that they were taking it to “improve their study habits”, which at the time always seemed like a means of justifying substance abuse (then again I never tried it so its quite possible that it does help some people). But I also remember that many of them were also abusing it with other substances, particularly alcohol. A kind of barter system developed between 21+ers who would buy alcohol for underage students diagnosed with ADHD. I might have to wait for your articles, but it would be interesting to hear if something similar is still happening today.