Feminist Digital Research Methodology for Rhetoricians of Health and Medicine

Internet Research Ethics

Perhaps the most well-known guidelines for ethical online research come from the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), an interdisciplinary, academic association that promotes reflexive and ethically aware Internet research. The AoIR’s (2012) guidelines lay out six general principles for online research: (a) understand the need to protect vulnerable communities, (b) use practical judgments to avoid causing harm, (c) recognize that digital data represents people, (d) balance the rights of subjects with the social benefits of research, (e) embrace the evolving nature of online research, and (f) engage in deliberative decision-making that reflects a broad range of information and recommendations (Markham & Buchanan, 2012, pp. 4–5).

Other notable reports for conducting ethically sound research include the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Ethical and Legal Aspects of Human Subjects Research on the Internet (Frankel & Siang, 1999) and the National Bioethics Advisory Commission’s (2001) Ethical and Policy Issues in Research Involving Human Participants. These documents, as well as those produced by the AoIR, respond to the principles and guidelines produced by the Belmont Report (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1979), a document that grew out of international declarations such as the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the “Nuremburg Code” (1949). The Belmont Report identified key ethical principles (e.g., respect for persons, beneficence, and justice) for biomedical and behavioral research with human subjects and provided researchers with important guidelines for how to apply these principles to their research.

Rhetorics of Health and Medicine

Over the last few decades, rhetoricians of health and medicine have built on the foundational principles generated by guiding documents like the Belmont Report (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1979) and the report by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (2001) in order to develop methods and methodologies that reflect a medical rhetorical perspective. For example, Scott (2003) employed cultural theory to argue for methodological approaches that interrogate risk communication practices associated with HIV testing. He suggested that rhetoricians must consider how research practices can reinforce institutional and hierarchical power structures reflecting discriminatory values and beliefs about vulnerable populations (e.g., gay and lesbian individuals, mothers with HIV). More recent work by Scott and Meloncon (2017) suggested that rhetoricians of health and medicine should capitalize on their ability to pull from diverse disciplinary perspectives in order to inform ethical research; doing so, they argued, would better allow scholars in the field to contend with “changing exigencies, conditions, relationships” across methodological orientations (p. 5). Scott and Meloncon’s work reveals a disciplinary shift toward more fully acknowledging the “methodological mutability” and “messiness” that often characterizes medical rhetorical research (pp. 5–8).

Both past and more recent methodological developments in the field, along with documents produced by associations like the AoIR, continue to inform how medical rhetoricians analyze health communications in digital contexts. For example, Opel (2017) articulated the need for new ethical approaches to digital research in Health 2.0 contexts that consider issues of privacy, surveillance, informed consent, and data collection. Ultimately, she contended that rhetoricians of health and medicine should understand digital methodologies, be aware of how their research is situated within broader ethical guidelines (e.g., those produced by the AoIR), and carefully evaluate “ethical decision-making processes for the specific context of each new study” (p. 191). Opel’s work marks an important shift in acknowledging that methodological approaches must attend to what Markham (2017) described as “a sea change in how we understand and study the social because of the impact of the digital” (p. 651).

Feminist Rhetorics

Feminist rhetoricians have also developed methodologies that inform digital research. Following a rich scholarly tradition that argues for understanding that methodologies represent ideologies (Bizzell, 1992; Collins, 2010; Glenn, 1994, 1997; Jack, 2009; Royster & Kirsch, 2012; Schell & Rawson, 2010), McKee and Porter (2010) examined ways that feminist methodologies can help digital researchers better understand informed consent, improve subjects’ circumstances through participation and transparency, and consider how virtual spaces complicate public–private boundaries. Ultimately, they recommended that feminist digital researchers participate in the communities they study as well as reflect on how their research personae, values, and behaviors affect research subjects. These recommendations reflect an important disciplinary shift by acknowledging that feminist ethical principles (e.g., reciprocity, care, and respect) can inform digital research methodologies.

Dadas (2016) extended the work of McKee and Porter (2010) by calling for a queer methodological approach to social media research. She argued that digital researchers must attend to feminist concerns regarding transparency between subject and researcher, pointing out that feminist scholars “have long emphasized the importance of transparency when it comes to explaining the researcher’s stance to participants” (p. 66). As the following case study illustrates, digital technologies have fundamentally changed the ways we can, and perhaps should, negotiate transparency and relationship building with research subjects.

Looking Ahead

The methodological shifts and ethical orientations just described have guided my research as a feminist rhetorician of health and medicine who studies vulnerable online communities. Recommendations by the AoIR have helped me recognize the invisible ways that technology creates power imbalances between researcher and subject. Feminist rhetorical methodologies have sharpened my concern with how the materiality of precarious bodies is mediated online. And scholarship in rhetorics of health and medicine has pushed me to embrace the inherent messiness and mutability of online research.

Although methodological advances in these areas have been substantial and impactful, they do not adequately account for how Web 2.0 technologies and digital research practices are changing how we think about and engage in health research with vulnerable online communities. Thus, rhetoricians of health and medicine need new methodological approaches that allow for effective responses to such evolutions. But in order to understand how a feminist digital research methodology attends to these issues, we must first examine how Web 2.0 technologies fundamentally change knowledge production and conceptions of vulnerability in online communities.

Online Communities

In her work on social media and knowledge communities, West (2016) argued that the interactive features of social media applications like Yik Yak encourage individuals to form online communities in which they collectively create, distribute, and maintain user-based knowledge (p. 12). West stressed that online communities are defined not only by users’ shared interests and interactions but also by the knowledge and information they coproduce via the Web. Hinson (2016) agreed, noting that online health communities often center on patients’ desire to use digital technologies to collectively produce knowledge about their health experiences. Both West and Hinson underscored that Web 2.0 technologies fundamentally change how online communities form and function; recognizing this shift is important because medical rhetoricians’ perceptions of what online communities are (and how meaning making occurs within them) influence the ethical frameworks that guide how we collect and analyze data.

While Grant et al. (2015), West (2016), and Hinson (2016) took an approach to understanding online communities as places that center on collaborative knowledge production, shared experiences, and interactivity, digital scholars Postill and Pink (2012) argued that researchers should interrogate the use of the word community to describe online networked interactions. They contended that the concept of community is problematic because it encourages researchers to focus on what it means to belong to a community rather than on the “routines, mobilities and socialities” of online groups (p. 124). Ultimately, Postill and Pink suggested that attending to the fluid interactions and activities of online groups positions researchers to better understand “the qualities of social relationships rather than their being part of a ‘community’” (p. 127).

Spoel (2008) offered yet another view of online communities, highlighting that while the social affordances of online spaces create opportunities for patients and health care professionals to form nonhierarchical partnerships, the affordances of these platforms still reinforce “consumption models” of online communication in which users passively consume information by official health care organizations rather than actively produce knowledge from their own experiences (p. 273). Spoel argued that while digital spaces such as midwifery Web sites appear to foster “nonhierarchical health communication,” they instead invisibly reinforce “discursive authority” that positions health care professionals’ knowledge over that of nonmedical professionals (pp. 270–285).

The scholars just surveyed approach the concept of community from varying perspectives; however, they all acknowledge that digital spaces foster rhetorical activities in ways that are fundamentally different from nondigital spaces. For example, West (2016) showed how the anonymous features of online applications like Yik Yak can “breed controversy” and “spread hateful, bigoted, or misinformed content.” At the same time, these affordances allow participants unique opportunities to form a “knowledge community” where information is cocreated and shared (p. 20). Similarly, Spoel (2008) pointed out that, despite the tendency of digitally networked spaces to reinforce hierarchical relationships, online technologies can facilitate meaningful partnerships between health-care professionals and patients in ways that face-to-face settings typically do not. Ultimately, these scholars stressed that “there is something distinctive about the digital, something that distinguishes it from other sorts of tools, venues, or phenomena” (Markham, 2017, p. 650).

Understanding how online communities form and function, as well as how networked digital spaces foster discursive activity, positions rhetoricians of health and medicine to critically examine how our methodological choices affect how we gather and understand health data and—more important—the impact that process can have on the communities we study. As I will illustrate, a feminist digital research methodology calls for a methodological realignment that encourages scholars working in the field to further develop engaged strategies for ethically researching vulnerable online communities.

Vulnerability

When seeking to understand and define vulnerability, rhetoricians of health and medicine often turn to their institutional review board (IRB). IRB guidelines are informed by documents such as the Belmont Report (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1979) as well as by statements such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the “Nuremburg Code” (1949). IRBs draw from these documents and others to categorize and define vulnerability and to offer guidelines for working with vulnerable populations such as children, prisoners, pregnant women, and mentally disabled persons.

Gustafson and Brunger (2014) complicated IRB notions of vulnerability, arguing that conceptions of “vulnerability” reflect individual, organizational, and institutional values. They suggested that communities that are considered vulnerable by institutional structures such as IRBs might not consider themselves at risk and might even perceive such a label as misguided or patronizing. Similarly, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (2001) argued that

calling competent people intrinsically “vulnerable” can be both insulting and misleading. It is not their gender or other group designation that exposes them to injury or coercion, but rather their situation that can be exploited by ethically unacceptable research. That is, it is their circumstances, which are situational, that create the vulnerability. (p. iv)

The concept of vulnerability is even more fluid in online environments because digital technologies can obscure the notion of research subject. In many cases, researchers can collect data from communities without participants even realizing they are being treated as subjects. Unfortunately, as McKee and Porter (2008) and, more recently, Opel (2017) illustrated, in some cases, IRBs have not yet adequately responded “to the changing nature of research with human participants in online spaces or to the use of computational tools and methods” (p. 177). Vulnerable communities, therefore, lack some of the institutional protections that extend to more traditional research settings. Because of that, we need new methodological approaches to help us contend with ethical decisions unique to online research.

Digital spaces can enhance the vulnerability of research subjects, but they can also create opportunities to build respectful and reciprocal relationships. As I illustrate in the case study that follows, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter allow us to connect with research participants in ways never before imagined. Such platforms, for example, offer opportunities to make our research processes and publication practices more transparent to online communities and increase our ability to build ongoing relationships and community partnerships. For rhetoricians of health and medicine, establishing these relationships is important because issues of health and illness often increase the vulnerability of the populations we work with and, therefore, our obligation to minimize potential harm.

Ethical Online Relationships

One of the benefits of doing digital research is that scholars can use online technologies to build relationships with the communities they study. I approached this process primarily through social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, blog forums, and Facebook), which I used to introduce myself to the BWF community. In my introductions, I talked about my mother’s negative experiences with childbirth, my own interest in having a positive birth experience, and my goal to help spread the message that women are perfectly capable of making informed choices about their bodies. I also talked with community members about my desire to understand how BWF used cyberfeminist activism to influence local and national conversations about natural childbirth. After a few rounds of introductions, I felt satisfied that I had successfully made my presence known and began regularly interacting with community members by liking and making comments on Facebook posts, retweeting stories and images, and informally chatting with other women on Facebook and Twitter about their experiences with pregnancy and labor.

In addition to these activities, I created an interactive blog that described my project and the types of health texts I planned to collect. I sent a link to BWF’s founder (who agreed to distribute it to the rest of the community) and encouraged community members to leave comments or questions, either on the blog itself or via e-mail. I also tapped into the interactive affordances of social media by using a hashtag to tweet about my data collection and writing process. The blog and hashtag helped establish my position as a feminist researcher, but just as important, these activities also allowed community members to monitor and respond to my data collection process.

These activities made me feel confident that I was being a feminist researcher who was working hard to build respectful, ethical relationships. But what I quickly realized was that the process of relationship building through social media was fraught with ethical dilemmas. Activities, for instance, like casually commenting on an individual’s Facebook post would sometimes prompt that person (and others) to post follow-up responses. On one occasion, I left a comment on someone’s Facebook post about the benefits of breast-feeding, along with a link to resources from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This comment prompted several community members to follow up with additional comments, resources, and personal anecdotes about breast-feeding. Before I knew it, a handful of us were deep in conversation about social and medical expectations concerning breast-feeding. At first, I eagerly collected these types of interactions because they provided insights into community members’ views on breast-feeding, pregnancy, and childbirth. But I soon began to feel uncomfortable about collecting their responses because I realized that my casual interactions were becoming more like research moments. Although I had not administered an IRB-approved interview to the individuals I was interacting with, in many ways, I was still informally interviewing them about their attitudes on breast-feeding.

This discomfort made me realize just how important it is for researchers, particularly those of us who work with vulnerable populations, to be mindful of the ways that digital technologies can unexpectedly propel us into situations in which our interactions can prompt individuals to divulge health information without first going through the appropriate IRB channels. A feminist digital research methodology, then, encourages us to be diligent about tuning into subtle moments in which, as Bivens (2017) wisely put it, “the absence of ‘no’ is not the presence of ‘yes’” (p. 139). Although community members were presumably aware of my presence as a researcher and had made informed decisions about whether or not to interact with me, they had not given me permission to interview them or to engage in online activities that would lead to the disclosure of personal health information.

My concern with the ethics of this kind of data collection made me decide to not collect any information that was casually disclosed through personal interactions. This decision was informed by Spoel’s (2008) concern about the ways that digital technologies can invisibly reinforce discursive authority and by Gotlib’s (2009) notion of “double marginalization” (p. 52). Gotlib argued that feminist ethicists working in health and medicine must recognize that medical institutions and procedures often doubly marginalize vulnerable individuals. An immigrant woman entering a health clinic, for instance, might experience double marginalization because of her status as both a woman and an immigrant. Drawing from Gotlib’s concept, I argue that digital interactions like those I just described might doubly marginalize vulnerable populations because they allow researchers to informally collect digital data without either formally disclosing these activities or going through the appropriate IRB channels.

Public–Private Boundaries

In an online community such as BWF, there is a constant flow of publicly available health information. For the feminist researcher, determining what is appropriate health data to collect can be a challenge. Consider, for example, one mother’s struggle to determine whether to circumcise her infant son, Sam (all names are pseudonyms). In a post to the BWF blog, she talks about her process of weighing the pros (e.g., social acceptance) and cons (e.g., potential medical side effects) of circumcision. Ultimately, she and her husband decided they wanted their son to “look normal” and have his foreskin removed. The procedure, however, caused Sam to experience considerable physical discomfort and medical complications. A story like Sam’s is personal, to say the least. And while the mother who shared it is an adult who can presumably make an informed decision about whether to publicly share her son’s health information, Sam is in no such position. Whether he likes it or not, his story (along with a photograph of him at a young age) is out there and available to anyone with an Internet connection.

A feminist digital research methodology calls for medical rhetoricians to be sensitive to the privacy needs of potentially vulnerable individuals like Sam. Although health narratives like his might be publicly available, community members who share these kinds of stories might, to some extent, consider them private. For example, the AoIR (2012) suggested that

people may operate in public spaces but maintain strong perceptions or expectations of privacy. Or, they may acknowledge that the substance of their communication is public, but that the specific context in which it appears implies restrictions on how that information is—or ought to be—used by other parties. (Markham & Buchanan, 2012, p. 6)

In her work on research ethics, Bivens (2017) discussed the need for rhetoricians of health and medicine to be attuned to the ways that research subjects might, despite giving consent, subtly withdraw from the research process. She described an experience in which a mother in a neonatal unit consented to participate in a research study only to later informally withdraw her consent through gestures and behaviors such as closing her eyes or pulling a privacy curtain around herself and her infant while breast-feeding. Bivens argued that these nonverbal cues represent “microwithdrawals of consent,” which she defined as “the implied or partial halt of a person’s willingness to participate in one or more aspects of the research process and the researcher’s awareness of that withdrawal” (pp. 138–139).

Feminist researchers who are attuned to the needs of their research subjects can certainly benefit from recognizing and responding to microwithdrawals of consent. But spotting microwithdrawals can be tricky in online environments because participants are unable to provide physical cues that indicate their desire to withdraw, either fully or partially, from a study. In some online situations, for example, subjects can enact microwithdrawals of consent by changing their permission settings or by deleting or modifying Web-based content; such methods, however, are not foolproof because a researcher might have already taken screenshots of content, collected metadata, or downloaded files. A researcher might also find it difficult to distinguish between a technological issue (e.g., a page not loading) and a participant’s decision to quietly withdraw from a research study.

Furthermore, many individuals who participate in online communities might not think of themselves as research subjects and, therefore, might not even consider withdrawing from a study site. In Sam’s case, although his mother might be aware that her son’s health information is available online and that a researcher might collect it, her son likely has no such knowledge and can neither give nor withdraw his consent. A feminist digital research methodology, then, asks us to consider the ways that digital spaces can heighten the vulnerability of individuals like Sam as well as mediate their ability to explicitly or implicitly withdraw their consent.

Ethics of Publication

In fall 2014, I was ready to submit a completed manuscript about the BWF community to a peer-reviewed journal. I did not, however, want to submit it just anywhere. I wanted to place the piece in a journal in which community members could easily—and freely—access my work. After all, participants had welcomed me into their community and had graciously let me collect and analyze their pregnancy and birth stories. It seemed only fair to give them unfettered access to my research.

Bivens (2017) argued that a key aspect of ethical research is decorum, which she described as the practice of being aware of the sensitivities and needs of vulnerable research subjects. Bivens suggested that decorum provides an important “filter” that can help a researcher cultivate thoughtful and respectful research habits (p. 146). Building on Bivens’s work, I argue that rhetoricians of health and medicine should use decorum not only as a methodological framework for thinking about how to interact respectfully with research subjects but also as an ethical principle to guide our publication practices.

Two ways we can apply decorum to our publication practices are by sharing our ongoing projects with the communities we study and by considering the merits of publishing in open-access journals. Thus far, rhetoricians of health and medicine have not examined how current publication practices can limit our ability to build ethical partnerships with vulnerable research subjects. A feminist digital research methodology unpacks some of these limitations and offers a heuristic that can help scholars make informed, ethical decisions about how and where to publish our work.

Sharing In-Progress Projects

My first step toward cultivating decorum with the BWF community began with sharing a draft of my work. First, I used Google Docs to create an open-access, shareable document. The draft contained a description of the project, my rationale for making it available, instructions on how to leave anonymous comments, and the deadline by which I needed feedback. Next, I sent the draft to BWF’s founder, asking her to distribute it within the community. The idea behind this process was to give participants the opportunity to respond to and critique my work before I submitted it to a journal.

I was quite anxious about sharing an unpublished draft of my work. I worried that someone might feel upset by my analysis, inform me that I could no longer use a particular birth story, or disagree with my findings. I was also nervous about publicly distributing my research prior to publication. But despite my hesitations, decorum called for me to “provide space” for participants to engage with my research and, if they so desired, to withdraw their consent at any time, for any reason, with or without explanation (Bivens, 2017, p. 146). Although community members’ engagement with the manuscript was minimal, the process of sharing my work helped me realize just how vulnerable community members must feel when sharing their own stories and experiences. Building on Royster and Kirsch’s (2012) work on feminist research practices, Bivens referred to this kind of vulnerability as “essential emotional labor” or lived experiences that help researchers more fully understand and empathize with their research subjects, particularly in health-care contexts (pp. 150–151).

Understandably, some scholars might feel uncomfortable with the prospect of sharing unpublished drafts of their research; after all, it is not easy to open ourselves up to critique by sharing unfinished manuscripts with audiences beyond trusted peers. But like Bivens, I believe feminist rhetoricians must create space for research subjects to either implicitly or explicitly withdraw their consent even if such withdrawals occur in the latter stages of a project or require us to not publish a particular aspect of our research. No matter how disappointing or frustrating these kinds of setbacks might be, a digital feminist research methodology asks us, whenever possible, to maintain compassionate, ongoing relationships with research participants that extend beyond the initial data collection process.

Publishing Open Access: Benefits and Challenges

Feminist rhetoricians of health and medicine can also cultivate decorum by making their published work freely available to the groups and communities they study. One way to accomplish this is by publishing in peer-reviewed, open-access journals. The Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) defined open access as content that is freely available

on the public Internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the Internet itself. (n.p.)

Because my research with BWF took place online, it made sense to use the Web’s affordances to make my work freely available to the community via peer-reviewed, open-access journals. Indeed, it seemed almost hypocritical to rely on the community as an online study site only to lock up the resulting research behind a paywall. So I decided to give community members ongoing access to my research, a decision that has paid off in the long run. Recently, for example, the community’s founder tweeted me, “@lbdehertogh do you still have the link(s) for your BWF research? Would love to share it again” (Harshe, 2017). Had I published the articles she requested in a traditional journal, I would have been unable to freely share my work with her.

My decision to publish manuscripts about the community’s rhetorical activities in open-access journals has not been a panacea, however. In some cases, I needed to determine what kinds of health information might not be suitable for online access or further distribution on the Web. For example, one of the narratives I initially included in an article about BWF centered on a new mom named Carol and her negative experiences with breast-feeding. In her blog post, Carol talks about how breast-feeding her infant daughter was so painful that she began to resent her daughter and dread breastfeeding. While an intimate story like Carol’s might be suitable for scholarly analysis, further circulating it on the Web in an open-access journal made me uncomfortable. I wondered, for instance, if her daughter might someday run across my analysis and what that would be like for her. Could she be harmed by my further circulating such a negative and potentially embarrassing story?

As I thought through this question, I kept in mind that decorum would have us attuned not only to the appropriateness of a particular action but also to the timing of it. In other words, we must consider how a certain act “might be the right time for one audience” but not the right time “for all audiences” (Bivens, 2017, p. 145). The timing of publishing Carol’s story in an open-access journal might have been right for one audience (i.e., the community) but not for another audience (i.e., Carol’s infant daughter). Because conceptions of vulnerability are complex and fluid, we have to consider how the potential vulnerability of groups and individuals can evolve over time. In this instance, Carol’s daughter might not yet be especially vulnerable to my further circulating her story on the Web; however, her vulnerability could increase in the future as she becomes aware of what her mother or others have posted about her online. In Web 2.0 spaces, issues of vulnerability and consent surrounding situations like these can be quite murky, making it difficult for researchers to determine the best course of action. In this case, I decided that I would not publish Carol’s story due to my concern that doing so might cause harm in the future.

Some might argue that open-access publishing is not really necessary because scholars can still, with or without a publisher’s permission, share copyrighted work with research subjects or distribute content online. While there are certainly numerous ways to give communities unofficial access to our work, a digital feminist research methodology asks us to do more than hack existing publication structures. It instead calls for us to consciously adopt modes of decorum that support consistent and intentional community-based access.

Understand How Vulnerability Manifests Online

First, scholars can use a feminist digital research methodology to examine how vulnerability manifests in online spaces. The National Bioethics Advisory Commission (2001) recognizes the fluidity of vulnerability, arguing that situational circumstances rather than sociocultural designations create vulnerability. The challenge, then, is determining what kinds of situational circumstances create vulnerability and how these circumstances manifest online in ways that are fundamentally different from how they do so in face-to-face settings.

As I illustrated, an individual or group’s vulnerability might be less obvious in digital environments, as well as a researcher’s ability to directly or indirectly cause harm. As rhetoricians who often work with precarious populations, we must be especially attuned to how digital research practices can doubly marginalize at-risk groups. Because the “Internet is so ubiquitous we don’t think much about it at all, we just think through it,” it is easy to forget how the Web both positively and negatively mediates how we collect information and data from vulnerable populations (Markham, 2017, p. 650). Therefore, we must be aware of how our digital presence and interactions with vulnerable online communities can both foster meaningful relationships and reinforce discursive hierarchies.

Consider Whether, Where, and How to Publish

Second, rhetoricians of health and medicine can use this methodology to consider whether, where, and how to publish their research. Sometimes as researchers, we run across compelling stories or pieces of information that enhance our research. Despite this, ethical concerns regarding consent, privacy, and circulation remind us that not all health data should be shared or published. For example, the circumcision story that I discussed earlier would have supported my analysis of the rhetorical activities of the BWF community, but I decided to not include this narrative in my publication because I worried about potentially harming a vulnerable individual.

As we move deeper into the postprivacy age—or an era in which so much health information and data are accessible online—we must continue not only to critically examine what kinds of health information we should collect but also to question whether, where, and how to publish such information. In some cases, the decorous thing to do is to not publish certain data (whether in an open-access venue or otherwise) because the potential risk to a vulnerable individual or community outweighs the benefits of our research.

Respond to Digital Evolutions

Third, rhetoricians of health and medicine can use this methodology to respond to the evolving nature of online spaces. Digital technologies enable researcher–subject interactions and data collection in ways never before imagined. While a feminist digital research methodology gives renewed attention to some of these evolutions, we must already begin to consider the ways that Web 3.0 applications will further complicate the ethics of online research. Characterized by technology’s ability to exchange data and create new information across applications with minimal user input, Web 3.0 technologies will become more and more integrated into our homes, lives, health, and—inevitably—our research. While these digital evolutions offer promising new ways to engage with research participants and collect health information, they will invariably create new challenges regarding how we build online relationships, understand public–private boundaries, and circulate our research. Such evolutions, then, call for us to continually revisit our methodological approaches and to critically examine the opportunities, complexities, and challenges of online research.