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Research on the digital and online environment poses several ethical questions that are new or, at least, newly pressing, especially in relation to youth. Established ethical practices require that research have integrity, quality, transparency, and impartiality. They also stipulate that risks to the researcher, institution, data, and participants should be anticipated and addressed. But difficulties arise when applying these to an environment in which the online and offline intersect in shifting ways. This paper discusses some real-life “digital dilemmas” to identify the emerging consensus among researchers. We note the 2012 guidelines by the Association of Internet Researchers, which advocates for ethical pluralism, for minimizing harm, and for the responsibility of the researcher where codes are insufficient.
As a point of contrast, we evaluate Markham’s (2012) radical argument for data fabrication
as and ethical practice. In reflecting on how researchers of the digital media practices of youth resolve their dilemmas in practice, we take up Markham’s challenge of identifying evolving practice, including researchers’ workarounds, but we eschew her solution of fabrication. Instead, we support the emerging consensus that while rich data are increasingly available for collection, they should not always be fully used or even retained in order to protect human subjects in a digital world in which future possible uses of data exceed the control of the researcher who collected them.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Speech by GCHQ Director Ian Lobban at International Institute for Strategic Studies, October 2010

This review will examine the academic literature over which role the internet has in the evolution of extremism and terrorism since its advent. It will compare two different approaches. The first claims that the internet is a major factor that facilitates ideas and narratives, which can lead to the rise of extremism and terrorism. The second, which in its turn contradicts this approach, argues that prior the advent of the internet extremists and terrorists where more successful into achieving their goals. For that reason, the review will be split into 3 sections. The first section will be examining some needed key definitions of what constitutes terrorism and extremism. Afterwards the essay will shift its approach towards the main debate of whether the internet has a causal link with extremism and terrorism or not. Therefore Sect. 2 brings forth the ways, in which the internet has helped terrorism to advance its goals. Moving on to the third section, this piece of work will discuss the approach in which the internet does not assist extremist narratives but, in the contrary helps the advancement of better research around it and its prevention. Lastly, the review will sum up over the literature that has been discussed and conclude that there is always space for future research.