Community-Engaged Design and Implementation of a Framework for Ethical Online Communities Research

该奖项支持一个研究团队，他们将与五个具有代表性的在线社区的成员和组织者合作，创建一个道德框架，以指导未来对在线空间的研究。该项目的总体目标是修复和防止违反道德的行为，并承认和减轻未来调查在社区层面的潜在危害，以尊重在线社区成员和组织者的优先事项和声音。为了实现这一目标，该团队将实施他们的框架，为包括其他研究人员、IRBs和伦理委员会、在线社区和教育机构在内的各种利益攸关方创建可行的指导方针。该框架还将用于通过课程整合培训下一代计算机专业人员，帮助在线社区为其网站开发“研究术语”页面，并通过向研究人员和大学伦理审查委员会传播信息来为未来的研究提供信息。研究团队将遵循三个阶段的过程，开发、验证和实施指导在线社区研究的新框架。第一阶段将创建一个初步框架，采用参与性和社区参与的方法，将几个关键在线社区(Linux、维基百科、InTheRoom、CaringBridge和r/EDAnomous)的成员和组织者的声音集中起来，作为不同社区结构、目的和优先事项的典型案例。在第二阶段，研究人员将通过与四个最相关研究社区的研究人员一起举办研讨会来完善和传播初步框架，并根据其描述、修辞、推理和应用能力对框架进行评估。在最后阶段，该小组将侧重于以上一段所述的各种方式实施他们的新框架。在每个阶段，结果将通过与在线社区成员和组织者的迭代过程以及由伦理专家组成的独立咨询委员会进行评估和改进。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports a team of researchers who will work with members and organizers of five representative online communities to create an ethical framework to guide future research on online spaces. The overarching goal of the project is to repair and prevent ethical breaches, and to acknowledge and mitigate potential community-level harms of future investigations in a way that honors the priorities and voices of members and organizers of online communities. To work towards this goal, the team will implement their framework to create actionable guidelines for a variety of stakeholders, including other researchers, IRBs and ethics boards, online communities, and educational institutions The framework will also be used to train the next generation of computing professionals through curricular integration, to help online communities to develop "Terms of Research'' pages for their sites, and to inform future research through dissemination to researchers and university ethics review boards.The research team will follow a three-phase process for the development, validation, and implementation of a new framework for guiding research on online communities. The first phase will create an initial framework by employing participatory and community-engaged approaches to center the voices of members and organizers of several critical online communities (Linux, Wikipedia, InTheRooms, CaringBridge, and r/EDAnonymous) as representative cases of diverse community structures, purposes, and priorities. In phase two, the investigators will refine and disseminate the initial framework through workshops with researchers in four most relevant research communities and assess the framework based on its descriptive, rhetorical, inferential, and application power. In the last phase, the team will focus on implementing their new framework in a variety of ways indicated in the previous paragraph. In each phase, outcomes will be assessed and refined through an iterative process with online community members and organizers and by an independent advisory committee of ethics experts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.