When academics or researchers in industry conduct research, they take care to obtain informed consent from the participant. This informed consent ensures that the potential participants in the study understand the topic of the project and any risks it involves. In addition, having informed consent protects the researcher and her institution or company from lawsuits. Informed consent is more difficult to obtain online because of the lack of witnesses. As a result, you must have the informed consent forms notarized or witnessed to ensure you are in compliance with your institution's rules.
Online studies, like on-site studies, must be approved by the university or company's institutional review board (IRB), unless the subject matter you are researching is publicly available online. The IRB committee will perform a careful review of all the research materials, questionnaires and forms the researcher plans to give the participants. This review prevents unethical research, such as asking upsetting or harmful questions of the online participants or deceiving them in a way that might damage them personally, such as informing them they were adopted.
Most researchers know that though everything online is protected by copyright, they can use portions of websites detailing publicly available conversations in the context of fair use, meaning that because they are using the information for research and are not using more than a portion of the text or materials, they are not violating copyright laws. However, just as when students write research papers, researchers must ensure they have cited all sources correctly and obtained permission, when appropriate, to use the material.
Researchers have infiltrated online support groups or special interest boards pretending to have a condition or to share the same interests as the other members on the site. This practice creates a problem because it is not only deceptive but forces site members to interact with a researcher when they haven't given informed consent. Researchers should follow the normal process of obtaining consent from members before they observe information that is not available to the public, such as information that requires a login or password to view.