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For qualitative researchers seeking the perspectives of people with unusual characteristics or circumstances, compliance with expectations about participant anonymity can be difficult, if not impossible. In the age of internet communications and emerging research methodologies, traditional strategies require ongoing re-examination to ensure cohesion between a project's ethical framework and its research practice. This paper reflects on the approach to informed consent used in a study with parent carers whose children had high-level support needs. A two-step process of written consent was developed in response to concerns about the possible re-identification of these parents as a result of their highly individual circumstances. This approach acknowledged the potential for identification, and maximised participants' agency in choosing the level of risk that they were comfortable to accommodate. The paper discusses the researcher's and participants' responses to the adapted consent process and recommends that researchers and ethics review committees remain open to the development of collaborative and innovative approaches that are also culturally and contextually relevant, to enable people to contribute perspectives that might otherwise be silenced by the very ethical frameworks that purport to protect their interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the outcomes of an online coin-tossing experiment evaluating cheating behavior among Ukrainian students. Over 1,500 participants were asked to make ten coin tosses and were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment groups tossing coins (1) online, (2) manually, or (3) having the choice between tossing manually or online. The study outcomes suggest that students are more inclined to cheat when they perceive the coin toss to be more "private." Moreover, the students' attitudes toward corruption appear to matter for the extent of their cheating, while socio-demographic characteristics were less important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholars have long established that city dwellers choose with whom to develop relationships on the basis of social proximity, spatial proximity remains the basis for neighbour relations involving greetings, social conversation, and the exchange of services. Few studies have systematically compared the respective roles of spatial and social proximity in neighbour relations. In this paper, we investigate these two factors through statistical analysis of four social network datasets representing relationships within four rented apartment buildings in Geneva, Switzerland. Using a measure of distance that takes into account how the layout and materiality of buildings shape relationships through accessibility, visibility and audibility, we compare the effects of spatial proximity with the effects of individual determinants and similarity. Our study also breaks new ground by comparing weak ties – between people who interact regularly – and "invisible ties", or ties to familiar strangers. Our study confirms that spatial proximity increases the likelihood of weak ties and questions the underlying mechanisms. It also shows that in addition to sociability, familiarity and anonymity are constitutive dimensions of neighbouring, even at the scale of buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing digitisation in our society also affects policing, which tends to make use of increasingly refined algorithmic tools based on abstract technologies. But the abstraction of technology, we argue, does not necessarily entail an increase in abstraction of police work. This paper contrasts the 'abstract police' debate with an analysis of police practices that use digital technologies to achieve greater precision. While the notion of abstract police assumes that computerisation distances police officers from their community, our empirical investigation of a geo-analysis unit in a German Land Office of Criminal Investigation shows that the adoption of abstract procedures does not by itself imply a detachment from local reference and community contact. What we call contextual reference can be productively combined with the impersonality and anonymity of algorithmic procedures, leading also to more effective and focused forms of collaboration with local entities. On the basis of our empirical results, we suggest a more nuanced understanding of the digitalisation of police work. Rather than leading to a progressive estrangement from the community of reference, the use of digital techniques can enable experimentation with innovative forms of 'precision policing', particularly in the field of crime prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the religious sympathies and motivations of the antiquary William Dugdale, and of some of those who helped support the publication of his works through patronage of their engraved plates. It examines in particular a series of nineteen costume plates illustrating Catholic religious habits, which feature in Dugdale's co-authored Monasticon Anglicanum (1655–73) and (with an element of duplication) in his Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656). The patrons of these plates are for the most part not openly named, but can in certain cases be identified through their coats of arms: at least two (Thomas Yate and Miles Stapleton) were themselves Catholic, and another (Wingfield Bodenham) appears to have been sympathetic to Catholicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global situation with cybercrime is worsening. The study aims to investigate the concept of lawful behavior in the context of challenges facing the IT sector and from the perspective of previous and modern theoretical and legal views concerning the formation of lawful behavior. The paper outlines factors that shape the lawful behavior of digital natives. The results of the literature review suggest that a digital shift of legal relations objectively reduces the role of the socio-hierarchical factor in the formation of lawful behavior. This research is of practical interest to specialists in legal and sociological fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dark Web, and the technology which underpins it, is fundamentally changing how crime is conducted. It is an enabler of cross-border, truly international crime where each of the major actors, evidence, and the proceeds of crime can all be in different jurisdictions. The technologies utilised mask the identity of individuals and the nature of the crimes committed. It is these complexities, and law's inability to deal with them, which this paper will focus on. It critically analyses six intersecting and overlapping themes in order to highlight the technological challenges posed by the Dark Web to the criminal law. The paper argues that the current approaches, regulatory structures, legislation and investigative methods are all unfit for purpose. There is little to suggest the law is any closer to restricting Dark Web crime, particularly given a substantial amount of the challenges posed are unsolved traditional issues, in a new form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since peace negotiations between the Colombian government and Farc guerrillas began in 2012, it is generally accepted in the country that journalism has a responsibility to nurture peace and that the media can positively influence reconciliation. But a recent analysis of domestic news concluded the voices of victims were distinctly absent and that the majority of coverage involved official sources. This paper argues that a journalism intended to promote reconciliation must speak to those who have direct experience of conflict and suffering. We argue that a deeper understanding of trauma may strengthen resilience and contribute to peacebuilding. Drawing on the authors' research working with young people embroiled in Colombia's conflict, the paper explores an alternative, innovative approach to the retelling of the stories of others and to post-conflictreporting. At a societal level, the project aimed to contribute to the process of reconciliation, using an autobiographical approach to capture and re-construct participants' experiences of the conflict and to highlight challenges of re-integration. It presented their hopes for reconciliation through creation of an animated documentary. At a journalistic level, the project explored the efficacy of combining traditional methods of storytelling with animation to offer anonymity to vulnerable contributors of testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The archival record of incarceration in the United States presents a substantial challenge for historical research. This becomes particularly acute in those instances where historians seek to use individual patient or prisoner records. Some of these records have been deposited in state archives, but many have not, and the use of specific inmate case files can involve restrictive rules of access. In every instance, complex interplays of power, access and privacy pose challenges for historians who wish to foreground the voices and experiences of the incarcerated, and to better understand the practices and impacts of state power. This paper uses a series of episodes from the author's own work to highlight these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the foundational principles of modern medical ethics is the maintenance of anonymity in the case of researching human material and in disseminating that research. This principle safeguards the privacy of living human subjects, and minimizes the prejudicial effect that personal knowledge might have on the researcher. Does this principle transfer to human material in museum contexts, especially when human remains are on public display? Many of the human remains displayed in museum or other institutional settings are necessarily anonymous. However, some institutions display the remains of historically identified individuals, often famous (royalty, senior clerics, saints, and celebrities) or infamous people (criminals). What are the ethical implications of exhibiting the remains of known individuals? This paper argues that human remains are situated on a continuum between person and thing. Anonymity is one of the strategies used to move the remains further towards the universal body as an object of enquiry (thing) and away from a biographied and personalized self (person). By decentring the post-colonial context in which much of the debate about the archaeological and museological treatment of human remains has taken place, I hope to tease apart some of the broader ethical issues around the power relations between the living and the dead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since location-based services and mobile applications collecting data gathered through Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning have become popular, concerns about location privacy have been expressed. Research has shown that human trajectory repositories containing sequences of observed locations ordered in time constitute a rich source for analyzing movement patterns, but they can also reveal sensitive personal information, such as a person's home address. In this paper, we present a mechanism that protects visits to sensitive locations by suppressing revealing parts of trajectories. Our attack model acknowledges that the course of a trajectory, combined with spatial context information, can facilitate privacy breaches even if sensitive locations have been concealed. Thus, we introduce the concept of k-site-unidentifiability, a specialization of k-anonymity, under which a sensitive location cannot be singled out from a group of at least k sites that the trajectory could have visited. In an experimental study, we show that our method is utility-preserving and protects sensitive locations reliably even in sparsely built environments. As it can process each trajectory independently, individuals may also use our mechanism to enhance their privacy before publishing their trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Mundell (1961. “A Theory of Optimum Currency Areas.” The American Economic Review 51 (4): 657–665) framed the fixed-versus-flexible exchange rate controversy in a novel way when he focused attention on currency areas and the ingredients necessary for a group of nations to form an optimal currency area (OCA). This paper proposes an analogous theory for cryptocurrencies, called optimal currency scope (OCS), and explains the conditions necessary for an OCS to exist. In contrast to an OCA, which is defined by its non-overlapping geographic areas, an OCS is defined by its multiple-overlapping attributes and the needs they solve, which we call scope. Scopes are not geographic and have fuzzy boundaries; so, the possibility of competing currencies in a single scope needs to be considered. The central issues surrounding an OCS are the optimal number and magnitude of currency attributes, rather than whether nations should adopt fixed versus fluctuating exchange rates. Similar to the findings since Mundell first introduced his OCA Theory, we find that the optimum number of cryptocurrency attributes and, therefore, the optimal number of cryptocurrencies must be determined empirically rather than theoretically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of much island research is to advocate for island communities, to encourage island scholarship by islanders themselves, and where that is not possible, to promote the voices of islanders 'on their own terms'. However, the very nature of small islands as socially and physically bounded communities, means that, whilst one voice cannot speak for the entire community, often the voice speaking is easily recognisable. This can result in the risk of local retribution, or more commonly truths going unspoken and power imbalances remaining unaddressed. To undertake island scholarship, it may be necessary in some cases, to anonymise the island, or at least aspects of it, in order to anonymise the speaker. In this paper, by drawing on examples from our own research on islands around the UK and other research in very small island communities, we consider the difficulty participants may face in speaking openly, and address the conflicts that confront researchers between supporting island stories whilst also offering a balanced reflection of island life. We suggest that while it is clearly important that island voices are heard, and that islanders speak on their own terms, there are instances where the off-island voice may be better placed to address island issues. The best route to do this may be via some form of anonymisation of subject and/or place of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proxy re-encryption is an essential prerequisite that facilitates a foreign entity (e.g., cloud server) to enforce the access of provisions of a document extended by one user to another user. While performing this task it is essential that the foreign entity does not learn any information about the actual document inside the encrypted envelop. In this paper, we present a scheme on Privacy-preserving Proxy Re-encryption for Access Control in Public Cloud, termed as PAC, that provides the proxy re-encryption of attribute-based encrypted data with receiver privacy. The proposed PAC scheme enables a proxy server to perform the re-encryption operation without learning anything about the data or the access policy. The PAC provides data confidentiality, and preserves receiver privacy. We show the PAC scheme adaptively secure against indistinguishability of ciphertext policy and chosen-plaintext attack (IND-CP-CPA) under the 2-Decisional Bilinear Diffie-Hellman Inversion assumption. The scheme is implemented on Google cloud instance and the experimental results show that the PAC scheme is storage and computation-efficient when compared to other related schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent and potentially profound innovation is the creation of cryptocurrencies and the underlying technology that is essential for their use in various financial transactions. Given the anonymity of a user of a cryptocurrency, such digital currencies may be used for many different types of both lawful and illicit activities. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which ethical considerations associated with the use of cryptocurrencies affect the valuations attached to such currencies. The examination is based on a text analytic approach that involves measuring the extent to which ethical and unethical words are used in a discussion related to Bitcoin on Twitter to determine if there is a connection between ethics and cryptocurrency valuations. We find the frequency of an unethical discussion about Bitcoin is negatively associated with its price. In contrast, the frequency of an ethical discussion is positively associated with its price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust provides the foundation for the successful implementation and operation of a virtual community (VC). Trust is an especially relevant success factor in online health-care communities. A look at existing communities leads to the conclusion that many VCs fail to meet requirements upon which trust is established. Based on the findings in the literature and the researchers' experience, this paper describes how trust-enabling functionalities can be systematically designed and implemented in a VC for cancer patients. Consequently, the outcomes of these design measures are evaluated. The evaluation results show that supporting trust can be achieved following a two-step model. The presented components support the perceived competence and perceived goodwill of the operators and the other members. Perceived goodwill and competence then support the process of creating and sustaining trust between members as well as between members and the operators of the VC and contribute to the successful implementation and maintenance of the community. The paper concludes with a discussion on further trust-supporting components yet to be implemented and gives recommendations for further research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the kinds of boundaries laid by residents of mixed-tenure housing communities and how distinctions are rationalized. Based on interview data on a densely mixed community (both owner-occupied and social housing apartments mixed with stairwells) in Helsinki, Finland, I observe how residents outline their neighbourhood. Based on the analysis, urban anonymity was the most significant repertoire defining communal life, followed by others such as sense of home and fiscal prudence. In densely mixed settings, residents are forced to witness each other’s domestic life; thus, dense social mixing can prevent prejudices between tenure groups. The study results contribute to the understanding of cultural repertoires in hierarchical relationships vis-à-vis each other, creating varying contexts and defining the lived realities in communities. Empirically, the results question prevailing images of troublesome tenants and well-behaved owners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent of the Covid-19 pandemic and the health, social and economic crisis it caused, brought additional burden to journalists, but also new power. At a time when the pandemic dominated the media space, the media assumed a key role in explaining, interpreting and offering help in understanding the pandemic to the public. Reporting on the pandemic brought many challenges for journalists, as they had to adapt their activities in accordance with the new reality. When communicating about risks and reporting on sensitive topics that have a great social impact, to which the pandemic and Covid-19 undoubtedly belong, it is even more important that media reporting is based on ethical and professional standards, to be responsible and transparent. Especially in risk communication, in times of crisis, reliable and verified information must be provided to the public. In the study, we were interested in the research of the reliance of journalists on anonymous sources in reporting on the pandemic. The paper's aim is was analyze the frequency of use of anonymous information according to different topics, type and tone of information, to see if anonymous media sources' use varied in times of a pandemic. Articles about Covid-19 contained more primary information, but less secondary and tertiary anonymous information. In Covid-19 articles more anonymous information with neutral sentiment was presented, but, at the same time, there was less information with negative sentiment and no information with positive sentiment. Particularly worrying was a low share of articles with included clarification on granting anonymity, on the other hand, there were significantly more verified sources of anonymous information with Covid-19 articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the social value of anonymity in online university student communities, through the presentation of research which tracked the final year of life of the social media application Yik Yak. Yik Yak was an anonymous, geosocial mobile application launched in 2013 which, at its peak in 2014, was used by around two million students in the US and UK. The research we report here is significant as a mixed method study tracing the final year of the life of this app in a large UK university between 2016 and 2017. The paper uses computational and ethnographic methods to understand what might be at stake in the loss of anonymity within university student communities in a datafied society. Countering the most common argument made against online anonymity – its association with hate speech and victimisation – the paper draws on recent conceptual work on the social value of anonymity to argue that anonymity online in this context had significant value for the communities that use it. This study of a now-lost social network constitutes a valuable portrait by which we might better understand our current predicament in relation to anonymity, its perceived value and its growing impossibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anonymity is a fundamental concept in group support systems (GSS) research. It is expected to reduce fear of social disapproval and of evaluation, and to lower inhibition and censorship. This is believed to create an environment that improves participation and communication, that promotes more objective and honest evaluation of ideas, and that enhances the productivity of groups and their decision-making process. However, empirical evidence about what are the effects of anonymity in GSS is inconclusive. This paper argues that there are two main reasons for the lack of consistent findings. First is the fact that anonymity has been defined too narrowly as the nonidentification of participants when, in fact, the literature in social psychology suggests that anonymity is multidimensional and subjective in nature. Second is the fact that the effects of anonymity interacts with other situational variables, making its relation to disinhibition complex. This paper argues that one critical situational variable is the importance of social evaluation of group members. A measure of the new conceptualization of anonymity and of the importance of social evaluation is proposed and the results of a preliminary test are presented. A contingency approach for studying the effects of anonymity is presented and the implications for future research and for practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the use and benefits of bar codes for providing greater student anonymity and enhancing grading fairness. Two studies are reported in this manuscript. Study 1 found that using bar codes to obscure the identity of students is more difficult than using other common methods for identifying students such as using names or numbers. Study 2 revealed that although most students supported greater anonymity in grading, many students opposed anonymity because they felt that it reduces the social process that also influences grade judgments, a process that they perceived to work in their favor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This invited review paper, the last in a series of two, presents an overview of the research evidence concerning oocyte donors' views on anonymity and openness. In the period from 2000 to the present, nine such studies that appeared in referred journals were located. This research shows that many donors have been recruited as personal or known donors, and that many of those who were recruited as anonymous donors were willing to be identified to offspring in the future. Research from studies of potential donors is presented, and this also indicates that recruitment of identifiable donors is possible. The implications of this research evidence, particularly as it relates to professional and clinic attitudes, the motivations of donors, the demographics of those donors who are prepared to be identifiable, and to meeting the needs of donors is highlighted and used as the basis for presenting a strategic approach to the recruitment of gamete donors - both sperm and oocyte. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary paper reflects on what I have recently learned from being involved in the Editorial Development Group established by the journal EPAT (Educational Philosophy and Theory) and its owners, the learned society of PESA (the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia). Besides disseminating the experience of this group, the paper suggests there is a link between the ideas of ‘netiquette’, the online academy, and the ethics of reviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines gender-biases on Stack Overflow, the world's largest question-and-answer forum of programming knowledge. Employing a non-binary gender identification built on usernames, I investigate the role of gender in shaping users' experience in technical forums. The analysis encompasses 11-years of activity, across levels of expertise, language, and specialism, to assess if Stack Overflow is really a paradise for programmers. I first examine individual users, asking if there are gender differences in key user metrics of success, focusing on reputation points, user tenure, and level of activity. Second, I test if there are gender-biases in how technical knowledge is recognised in the question-answer format of the platform. Third, using social network analysis I investigate if interaction on Stack Overflow is organised by gender. Results show that sharing and recognising technical knowledge is dictated by users' gender, even when it is operationalised beyond a binary. I find that feminine users receive lower scores for their answers, despite exhibiting higher effort in their contributions. I also show that interaction on Stack Overflow is organised by gender. Specifically, that feminine users preferentially interact with other feminine users. The findings emphasise the central role of gender in shaping interaction in technical spaces, a necessity for participation in the masculine-dominated forum. I conclude the study with recommendations for inclusivity in online forums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anonymity is an unquestioned norm in education research, yet few scholars have theorized how this methodological standard reaffirms structural racism. This practice is critical to question given the presiding mismatch between the rhetoric and practice of racial diversity across educational contexts. Using Derrick Bell's interest convergence as a critical race framework, I contend institutional review boards (IRBs) embody a converging of interests between educational institutions and research participants (particularly People of Color). As a de facto requirement of IRBs, research site anonymity disrupts readers' ability to imagine structural racism as a normal and endemic component of American education. As a result, the predilection to default to anonymity without question minimizes racism's impact and perpetuates cultures of silence deeming racism socially taboo. This conceptual paper concludes with a discussion of limitations and additional methodological points for readers to consider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past year the entire world has faced incredible health and economic challenges due to the life-threatening novel Coronavirus Disease – 2019 (COVID-19) and is an ongoing crisis. In this situation, the way forward seems to be a balanced approach – where, infected/exposed people are strictly quarantined and recovered/unexposed people are allowed to carry on with their day-to-day business activities. However, appropriate social/physical distancing norms will have to be strictly followed till the pandemic is completely over. Therefore, mechanisms are required that will assist people in following the social and physical distancing norms in public places. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving blockchain-based framework that allows people, through use of their smartphones and other communication devices, to protect themselves from infections as they go about their day-to-day activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the conceptual resources provided by Lacanian accounts of melancholia and the death drive, and by means of reference to a clinical case summary and the film Into the Wild, this paper hopes to open up new ways of thinking about melancholic psychosis. The paper foregrounds a series of clinical themes that may be grouped under the rubric of “problems in symbolic fixit”: difficulties in receiving gifts, inability to mediate relations of intimacy, yearning for anonymity/disappearance, and the condition of the twilight world. These themes, while not obviously associated with Freud’s account of melancholia, represent areas of diagnostic priority for a Lacanian approach attuned to the role of symbolic processes and the traumatic “real” object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, Location-based services (LBS) are important services that take benefits from the revolution in communications. Nevertheless, user's privacy is considered as significant challenge that could impede the use of this type of services. Current Privacy-preserving techniques mainly preserve location not query privacy (i.e., query issuer identification). The untrusted LBS provider (adversary) can breach user privacy in case that it has some user background knowledge and caches queries from more than one user in the same anonymity region (group). These types of attacks use users' profiles and cached queries to predict semantically the issuer of each query. In this paper, a peer-to-peer privacy-preserving model is presented to protect the user privacy against these types of attacks taking into account the users' profiles and cached queries in the LBS server. Using this model, an inference algorithm for predicating semantically the issuer of each query and her/his underlying location is presented to check the probability that a query privacy could be breached. A set of experiments is performed to check the effectiveness of the proposed privacy-preserving model. The results show that the cached queries with semantic matching affect negatively in breaching the query and location privacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of Location-based Services (LBS), especially in wireless communications systems, has raised a growing concern for user about his privacy. As for every location-based query, the user has to reveal his location coordinates (through technologies like Global Positioning Systems); if this information could be revealed to anybody, it becomes a privacy breach. To take care of these issues, several techniques have come up among which k-anonymity has been most widely used and studied in different forms and different contexts. In this paper, we have reviewed the application of k-anonymity for LBS and its recent advancements. While doing so, we have recognized three perspectives for the applicability of k-anonymity for LBS: the application of k-anonymity based on the architecture, based on the algorithms for anonymization, and based on the types of k-anonymity (according to the different query processing techniques). Hence, the review has been done within the framework of these perspectives. These perspectives have covered almost all the aspects of the works which have been reviewed in this paper. This review can arm the privacy providers with the latest techniques and possible modifications in their present techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Medical student concern that the submission of named examination scripts to examiners could cause bias initiated a study on the effect of identified and de-identified scripts on assessment outcome. Methods: Data were collected from a convenience examination sample of Year 1 (n = 88 students; n = 29 questions) and Year 2 scripts (n = 75 students; n = 27 questions). Scripts were randomised for presentation to examiners with or without identification for all of a given student's work. Assessment outcomes, by year and marking condition, were a non-normal distribution. Results: Non-parametric analysis determined that there were no systematic differences in assessment outcome under the two marking conditions (MW < 0.05). Conclusion: We continue for a range of pedagogical reasons to present identified papers to examiners. Importantly, this study also demonstrates a research-led approach to resolving student queries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the Outside (On the Outside. 2019. Film. Directed by Paul Gray. UK: Good Well Films), is a 42 minute film that is the outcome of a participatory film project involving women serving sentences in HM Prison Polmont, Scotland. Scripts were developed that communicated the women's stories using their exact spoken words and individual narratives were recounted by actors, giving introspective accounts of the women's lives, while challenging preconceived notions of the label 'prisoner.' Representations of the criminal justice system are a highly visible presence on current mainstream platforms. Delineations between fiction and non-fiction narrative are increasingly exercised by film-makers to affect audience expectations, in particular when exploring dramatisations of 'true life' crimes. On the Outside is a project led by Paul Gray, whose practice led research explores the dynamics of such delineations through collaboration with the participants, in their roles as authors of their own narratives. This paper recounts the processes involved in realising the project, which will be discussed in relation to verbatim practices, as well as the underlying methodology used to action participatory video techniques. The aim was to facilitate a production process that best suited the specific voices of those involved, by recognising the significance of anonymity in storytelling, when collaborating with vulnerable individuals and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay offers an interpretation of the canonical history of strolling as a non-economic practice, that is, as a practice free of purpose and means. I consider strolling as a state of mind that discloses abundance in a similar way as rationality discloses scarcity. I inquire into the multiple facets of this state of mind by re-reading three phases in its literary and cultural history: the early modern artist-stroller of the nineteenth-century panoramic literature that finds its peak in Charles Baudelaire; the high modern consumer-stroller as described in the inter-war period, notably in the work of Walter Benjamin; and the late modern subversive stroller that is re-discovered in the mid-twentieth century by the Situationist Guy Debord among others. This interpretation both sheds light on the social preconditions of economic rationality as an organizing principle of a market society, as well as the potential to step out of this principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doing insider research can raise many problematic issues, particularly if the insiders are also close relatives. This paper deals with complexities arising from research which is participatory in nature. Thus, this paper seeks to describe the various sticking points that were encountered by the researcher when she decided to embark on insider research which focused on close relatives with a particular disability. These sticking points were encountered when the researcher had to decide about which methods of data collection should be used; when she had to see which criteria were to be taken into consideration when selecting participants; when dealing with issues of anonymity and informed consent; and when dealing with issues regarding representation and dissemination. Although such sticking points seemed to be insurmountable at times, by virtue of being aporetic, the researcher will discuss decisions taken in order to deal with these difficult situations while also keeping in mind ethical considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper compares the perceptions of marketing research executives and industrial respondents regarding factors impacting on industrial mail survey response. Following a review of the different research traditions to the study of mail response rates, a "survey-on-surveys" approach is introduced and used to study the potential impacts of different design and implementation factors on survey response. The results of the study provide empirical evidence on the perceived influence of a wide variety of response-inducing factors in industrial mail surveys, and are used to generate managerial recommendations for the conduct of the latter. Directions for future research are also identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the problem of vituperative feedback from peer reviewers. We argue that such feedback is morally unacceptable, insofar as it humiliates authors and damages their dignity. We draw from social-psychological research to explore those aspects of the peer-review process in general and the anonymity of blind reviewing in particular that contribute to reviewers’ humiliating comments. We then apply Iris Murdoch's ideas about a virtuous consciousness and humility to make the case that peer referees have a moral obligation not to humiliate the authors whose work they review. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the evolution of traditional power grids into smart grids, utilities alone cannot yet provide all electricity services and thus third-party service providers (SPs) are required to help in service provision. Therefore, it is critical to secure third-party service provisions in smart grids. In particular, authentication is required to be done in the first place. However, authentication for multiple third-party SPs has not been well studied in smart grids. In this paper, we model the third-party service provision in smart grids for the first time which can capture specific cyber security threats with the existence of multiple third-party SPs. Furthermore, we propose an efficient authentication scheme for multiple third-party SPs. Security analysis shows that our scheme can achieve multiserver authentication, conditional anonymity, and other important security goals. Performance evaluation demonstrates that our scheme is well suited for smart meters (SMs) with limited resources, and each user only needs to do one registration for multiple SPs thus it has low communication overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Anonymization is viewed as an instrument by which personal data can be rendered so that it can be processed further without harming data subjects' private lives, for purposes that are beneficial to the public good. The anonymization isfairif the possibility of re-identification can be practically excluded. The data processor does all that he or she can to ensure this. For a fair anonymization, simply removing the primary personal identification data, such as the name, resident address, phone number and email address, is not enough, as many papers have warned. Therefore, new guidance documents, and even legal rulings such as the HIPAA Privacy Rule on de-identification, may improve the security of anonymization. Researchers are continuously testing the efficiency of the methods and simulating re-identification attacks. Since the US and Canada do not have a population registry, re-identification experiments were carried out with the help of other publicly available databases, such as census data or the voters' database. Unfortunately, neither of these is complete and sufficiently detailed, so the computed risk was only an estimate. The author obtained the zip code, gender, date of birth distribution data from the Hungarian population registry and computed re-identification risks in several simulated cases. This paper also gives an insight into the legal environment of Hungarian personal medical data protection legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of the Belmont Report in 1979 and the implementation of Institutional Review Boards focused the need for anonymity as a means to the performance of ethics in human subject inquiry. Despite anonymity being the most frequent recommendation of Institutional Review Boards, the debate between anonymity and identifiability, and what is best for the research, the subject, and the researcher remains strong. This paper explores this debate and the implications that recommendations of anonymity, confidentiality, privacy, and identifiability have on the research process. Through examples of past research that have questioned and dealt with the ethical implications of these concepts, this paper fills a research gap that summarizes and characterizes the debate. This paper explores questions such as: What can anonymity, confidentiality, and privacy add to the research process? And how do they complicate it? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media platforms provide an inexpensive communication medium that allows anyone to publish content and anyone interested in the content can obtain it. However, this same potential of social media provide space for discourses that are harmful to certain groups of people. Examples of these discourses include bullying, offensive content, and hate speech. Out of these discourses hate speech is rapidly recognized as a serious problem by authorities of many countries. In this paper, we provide the first of a kind systematic large-scale measurement and analysis study of explicit expressions of hate speech in online social media. We aim to understand the abundance of hate speech in online social media, the most common hate expressions, the effect of anonymity on hate speech, the sensitivity of hate speech and the most hated groups across regions. In order to achieve our objectives, we gather traces from two social media systems: Whisper and Twitter. We then develop and validate a methodology to identify hate speech on both of these systems. Our results identify hate speech forms and unveil a set of important patterns, providing not only a broader understanding of online hate speech, but also offering directions for detection and prevention approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on ethical considerations for artists involved in collaborative projects with refugees and asylum seekers is sparse, indicating a lack of robust discussions on the ethical pitfalls artists may encounter in such endeavours. Based on the first author’s reflections on her subjective experiences as an artist representing the story of a young Somali asylum seeker woman through collaborative filmmaking, this paper aims to open up broader discussions about artists’ responsibilities to produce counter-narratives that value refugees’ perspectives and voices. By doing so, artists can avoid perpetuating existing tropes that can at times be detrimental to refugees and asylum seekers, and ensure that artists’ own agendas are secondary to what ‘protagonists’ wish to convey. We suggest five simple ways of realising this goal: genuine collaboration; informed consent; anonymity; focusing on the mundane; and (in the case of filmmaking specifically) an awareness of the editing process as a political act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quantitative strand of the Young People's Attitudes towards Religious Diversity Project, conducted by the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, set out to capture data from over 2000 students living in each of the four nations of the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) and from London as a special case. Anonymity and confidentiality were assured. In total, nearly 12,000 students submitted thoroughly completed questionnaires. The project concentrated on schools within the state-maintained sector, but sought to obtain roughly equal numbers of students within each of the five areas attending schools with a religious character and without a religious foundation. The aim of the present paper is to collate, present and assess the findings from this survey that are relevant to the theme of this Special Issue, concerned with examining how a religion shapes the way of seeing the world and seeing other religious traditions. Highlights from the research include: students who are themselves religiously motivated hold more positive attitudes towards religious diversity; there is no evidence that schools with a religious character produce students who are less-accepting of people from other religious faiths; religious education does work in the sense of leading to attitudes that promote community cohesion, lessen religious conflict and promote the common good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ring signature is a primitive that allows an entity to sign a message on behalf of a group of potential signers (called a ring) while preserving unconditional anonymity in the ring. Ring signature has found many applications in fair exchange, electronic transaction protocols, and ad hoc networks. In this paper, a survey of ring signature from a number of perspectives is presented to provide researchers with a better understanding of this primitive. We survey the state-of-the-art of ring signature schemes along with the security model, and compare their security properties and efficiency. Furthermore, the extensions of ring signature schemes with special properties are also investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines my research journey, specifically in relation to the challenges I faced in anonymising and representing my research participants. Anonymity is an important ethical procedure and every researcher is expected to ensure that his or her research participants are protected. Although ethical guidelines are written to inform and guide researchers, how these guidelines are interpreted by novice researchers can present some formidable challenges to those carrying out research in different cultural contexts. One of the dilemmas that I faced as a new researcher from the Maldives was how I was going to anonymise my participants as they came from such a small community. This became a concern because one of the underlying aims of the qualitative action research I was conducting myself and also facilitating with the teachers required me to represent their voices fairly in my research study. However, the small size and the hierarchical nature of the community, together with my identity as a researcher and a former teacher educator, posed some difficulties. My perception of anonymity as a rigid set of guidelines also prevented me from negotiating issues relating to anonymity and representation with my participants. Based on my experience, I conclude that while ethical procedures are necessary, it is still important to explore ways of situating these within our own cultural systems. Ethics should be approached as a negotiable process from the beginning to the end of the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Anonymity is often taken-for-granted as an ethical necessity. Discussions around reuse of qualitative data have added further weight to its importance for protecting research participants from unknown future use of data. Yet, anonymisation also compromises the possibilities of future reuse. This paper argues that default anonymisation forecloses discussion of the ethics of naming; it calls for a reorientation of debate, away from an assumption of the universal/ist ethical good of anonymity, towards a politics and ethics of the question of naming. Rather than a slide from an ethic of avoiding harm to a paternalistic notion of protection, I suggest that questions of naming in research, and avoidance of harm, could productively be approached through a feminist ethics of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central ethical issue confronting researchers using visual methods is how to manage the use of identifiable images. Photographic and other visual materials can make the anonymisation of individuals problematic; at the same time many researchers, as well as research participants, view image manipulation as undesirable. Anonymisation is one of a range of ethical concerns that need consideration in relation to the use of identifiable images. Other concerns include the contexts in which images were produced and through which they may be consumed, the longevity of images in the public domain and the potential for future uses and secondary analysis of images. This paper explores some of the ways in which researchers specifically approach anonymisation in relation to visual methods, drawing on a qualitative study of ethical issues in visual research. Focus group discussions and interviews with researchers who use visual methods revealed the ongoing challenges of identification and anonymisation. While decisions about visual identification are inevitably complex and situated, our explorations revealed ongoing tensions between, on the one hand, research participants’ rights and researchers’ desire for participants to be seen as well as heard and, on the other hand, researchers’ real and perceived ethical responsibility to safeguard participants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives The survey method is often used to identify trends in sexual behaviour and attitudes. In order for research conclusions to be valid, however, data gathered from surveys must be unambiguous. For the current paper we reviewed survey research of sexual behaviour published in recent years. Our objective was to identify common methodological issues and provide recommendations for how to address them. Method We examined 62 articles, published in four prominent sexual health journals over the past six years. We evaluated each article based on how adequately its authors addressed four recurring methodological issues: ambiguous terminology, heterosexual bias, procedures that compromise honesty in responses, and survey language/literacy considerations. Results The review revealed some recurring issues: 47% of the studies failed to address the question of sexual orientation, sexual behaviour terminology was explicitly defined in only 32% of questionnaires, fewer than 5% of surveys clarified whether the sexual encounters in question were consensual, and 21% of the articles contained no mention of anonymity or confidentiality for participants. Discussion These results reveal common issues with survey data that compromise the validity of findings. In order to have confidence in research conclusions and recommendations, it is important that these issues be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We face a growing need to be able to perform linkage among data set records to connect data about the same individual, organization or event so that further analysis becomes possible. At the same time, we also need to do a better job of protecting the privacy of the individuals identified by data set records. Therefore, it would be ideal if linkage could be effectively performed based not on the actual data but on some anonymous form of the data without diminishing the ability to link records whose identifiers are only “close” to each other, not equal, because of typical recording errors. This paper reviews existing proposals for how such anonymized string comparisons might be accomplished, but demonstrates that existing methods have various operational deficiencies. It therefore argues that new, more capable methods are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ethical issues involved when researchers attempt to study participants who are personally close to them. It describes a case in which two researchers decided to study the experiences respectively of their son and grandson, both with ADD. They had barely initiated the study when ethical concerns led them to abandon the project. The authors relate the specific issues raised in the case to general issues of ethics in action research, such as anonymity, informed consent, collaboration, and the tension between the personal and professional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the issue of student anonymity in the summative assessment of student work in higher education. It considers both theoretical literature pertaining to bias in the evaluation of the work of others and the limited empirical work undertaken on this issue in higher education. It then describes the experience of three higher education institutions in their institutional consideration of student anonymity in assessment. It concludes with an attempt to integrate three perspectives from teaching and learning theory into the anonymity debate, which has largely been conceived in terms of institutional policy, and suggests that there is scope for much further teaching and learning research in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1 April 2005, gamete donors in the United Kingdom (UK) have to be willing, in the future, to be identified to offspring should the offspring want this. This change in law has lead to considerable anxiety about the future availability of donors. This paper presents an overview of the research evidence concerning semen donors' views on anonymity and openness, as it appears in referred journals since 1995. Research evidence that is available, but not yet been published in referred journals, is also reviewed. The nature of this evidence is analysed and criticized. Research on the views of potential semen donors is also reviewed, as is the evidence that is available from jurisdictions that have changed the law and required donor openness. The evidence shows that it is possible to recruit semen donors who are required to be identifiable in the future. The evidence, while not conclusive, points to an open system attracting different kinds of men than an anonymous system, and this has clear implications for future recruitment policies. The evidence-based approach to recruitment of gamete donors challenges some of the beliefs, attitudes and fears that have been associated with this law change in the UK, and in other countries where similar changes have taken place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]