Researchers as lurkers

An interesting paragraph in a book I am reading at the moment (Lurking, by Joanne McNeil). We are used to talking about learners as lurkers, but here’s another perspective. What images do we invoke when we think about the researcher as lurker?

The picture of researcher as outsider – as a profiteer swooping in to steal content and to cherry pick meaning to fit their own agenda – was one that gave me pause during my own PhD (I am sure some of you remember the story of the ‘researchers’ who came across a Google Doc that some of us were using to start writing a journal article and used it in a conference presentation without asking or attributing – the affront we felt at that unethical behaviour has stayed with me). I chose participatory research as my methodology, and ultimately ended up writing an autoethnography because I wanted to try to allow my community to have a voice in what I was doing, and to make it clear that what I was saying was my own interpretation.

Of course Twitter is public, and the ToS make it clear that researchers are permitted to use tweets without attribution, but imo that is not the full story – there are also ethical considerations (I say some things about this in my PhD thesis if anyone is interested).

I’m not sure where I am going with this yet – as always I am writing to find out what I am thinking.