Risk management in ethics review processes: beyond a tick-box exercise?

The ethical considerations of research projects are integral to methodology: “method is ethics, ethics is method” (Markham). Methodology shapes the ethical questions that we must consider, which then shape methodological choices. Ethics is institutionalised in Research Ethics Committees (RECs) and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) with the process intended as a measure to prevent ‘undue harm’ (Morrison et al). However, literature is replete with ‘horror stories’ of committee overreach, oversight, and the misapplication of ethical principles. Research on extremism and the internet is one intersection that can face a challenging ethical review process, with Morrison et al noting that such research is often considered ‘inherently high risk’ even when it does not need to be. Traditional research ethics and institutional processes have been more broadly critiqued for not keeping up with the evolving risk landscape and ethical dilemmas facing researchers. For researchers of extremism, the power balance can be upended with researchers rendered vulnerable in front of the far right's ‘gaze’ (Massanari). The advent of the internet and neoliberal developments in academia such as ‘publish or perish’ and success measured on output and impact have reshaped the landscape of potential threats and the risks researchers are exposed to. Academics are increasingly understood to be at risk of networked harassment, watchlists, vicarious trauma, and institutional critique, with the far-right training its ‘gaze’ on critical research in particular (Massanari). These developments have coincided with an explosion in the volume of scholarship on the far right. Drawing from 21 interviews with researchers of the far right, this paper situates lived experience within literature on neoliberal academia and the libertarian internet to critically analyse the environment in which we operate and its impact on how we research. In particular, the paper focuses on how institutional ethics processes have responded to developments in methodology, research environments, and the risk environment. The findings indicate that risk and harm are embedded in the practice of such research. Exacerbating this, institutional ethics processes are experienced as incompatible with supporting research and researchers, perceived to lack fundamental knowledge, and maintaining an overwhelming focus on responsibilising risk and liability. Rather than developing with innovative research, respondents found that ethics committees judged their projects based on traditional research ethics and mediatised understandings of the far right and the internet. This paper argues that institutional ethics review processes are an insufficient way to assess and manage risk due to the focus on liability, and emphasis on the researcher as expert. This has significant ramifications for institutional and individual protection of researchers, especially when confronting broader trends of academic microcelebrity. Markham, A., 2006. Ethic as Method, Method as Ethic: A Case for Reflexivity in Qualitative ICT Research. Journal of Information Ethics, 15(2), pp.37-54. Massanari, A., 2018. Rethinking Research Ethics, Power, and the Risk of Visibility in the Era of the “Alt-Right” Gaze. Social Media + Society, 4(2), p.205630511876830. Morrison, J., Silke, A. and Bont, E., 2021. The Development of the Framework for Research Ethics in Terrorism Studies (FRETS). Terrorism and Political Violence, 33(2), pp.271-289.