Discussions

In an increasingly internationalised academic environment, it is common that you may encounter subjects of another cultural background. Research ethics call for a culturally sensitive approach to this kind of research, because shared context can foster mutual understanding and trust and thus help to obtain the optimal outcome. However, on what amounts to cultural sensitivity in research, scholars differ in their understanding. Banister (2014) together with other co-authors defined cultural sensitive research as “research methods that have been adapted to incorporate knowledge of a cultural

For research involving human subjects, issues of privacy, confidentiality and consent will more readily arise and researchers will need to comply with the relevant regulations. Thus to tell whether a project constitutes human subjects research becomes important, especially in borderline cases, such as social media research. Megan Moreno together with her colleagues looked into this question. In their co-authored article "Ethics of social media research: common concerns and practical considerations", social media research was categorised into three types: observational, interactive and interview. Under the United