But as online research takes place in a range of new venues (email, chatrooms, webpages, various forms of “instant messaging,” MUDs and MOOs, USENET newsgroups, audio/video exchanges, etc.) – researchers, research subjects, and those charged with research oversight will often encounter ethical questions and dilemmas that are not directly addressed in extant statements and guidelines. In addition, both the great variety of human inter/actions observable online and the clear need to study these inter/actions in interdisciplinary ways have thus engaged researchers and scholars in disciplines beyond those traditionally involved in human subjects research: for example, researching the multiple uses of texts and graphics images in diverse Internet.
