Informing participants:

“Netnography” which is a type of online based participant-observation method of data collection, is not explicitly a covert method, and no attempt will be made to conceal the nature of the project or its methods from participants, but some of those whose views feature in the study may not have been explicitly contacted about the research. For example, when we identify an online community that may provide useful data for the research, we will explicitly approach the community’s owners/admins to gain their consent and to discuss how to inform and gain consent from other community members. Ordinarily this will be done by placing a post on the community informing members about the research and their rights in relation to it. However, some members may not see that post, and so they may not have been explicitly contacted about the research. Every practical attempt will be made to contact all participants. All the data downloaded for analysis in this project will be anonymised and we forsee no particular sources of harm coming from the data collection. On the contrary, we hope that the development of an AI powered advisor will have a positive impact on the participants and for creative freelancers in general.

Use of data:

A concern with gathering online data is that it was not produced for the purpose of research, and participants may be uncomfortable with it being used in this way. This research abides by the APA’s guidance on the use of social media guides such as Facebook and ENU’s guidance on using social media for research. In practice, this means I gain informed consent from participants wherever possible and practicable (i.e. I can identify and contact the participant, and doing so would not engage an unduly long amount of time). Where I cannot gain informed consent, I consider whether the location of the data is an inherently public or private space. If it is a private forum, I consider the data to be private and do not use it, if it is public, I will gather the data for analysis and include an identifier so that I remember to ensure any traceable or identifiable signifiers are not used in any quotes. This mirrors the approach I have taken in previous netnographic research (Patrick and Kranert, 2021).

You can find more detailed information about the gathering and storage of data for the AI Advice project in the Privacy Notice and Privacy Impact assessment linked below.

Consent forms for this project are available online. please click here for the online data consent form, and here for the interview consent form.

If you have any concerns about the gathering or handling of data in this project you can contact the researcher, Dr Holly Patrick, or the convenor of the Business School Research Integrity Committee, Dr Lorna Gilles.