School of Anthropology & Society › Virtual Ethnography Ethics Policy
This separate, mandatory policy governs all virtual ethnographic learning.
It addresses
- Public versus private digital spaces and perceived privacy
- Platform terms of service
- Informed, contextual consent and group-administrator permission
- Usernames, avatars, screenshots, images, video, and searchable quotations
- Deleted content, private groups, and encrypted groups
- Minors, vulnerable users, political and religious communities
- Hate speech, harassment, doxxing, and sensitive identities
- Data retention, platform APIs, automated collection, and scraping
- Copyright, anonymization, publication, and participant harm
Firm limits
- Not all publicly accessible content may be used freely.
- The School does not teach unauthorized scraping, access-control bypass, private-account intrusion, or surveillance.
- Platform users remain human participants deserving protection.
Content Status: DRAFT · AI-assisted; human ethics review pending. Non-degree.