• 1 https://www.sfsic.org/wp-inside/uploads/2020/06/mou_dgpuk_sacm_ogk_sfsic.pdf
• 2 https://www.dgpuk.de/
• 3 http://www.ogk.at/
• 4 https://sgkm.ch/en/

1Since May 2020 a memorandum of understanding¹ has been established between the SFSIC and its german-speaking sister organizations from the so-called DACH region (DGPuK² for Germany „D“, ÖGK³ for Austria „A“ and SACM ⁴for Switzerland „CH“). The regular exchanges between our respective associations have since covered a variety of cross-national topics, like the precarious situation of young academics, open data initiatives and infrastructures while making sure that members of our academic communities can participate in sister events and get information on the job market and scientific projects and events.

• 5 Martin Steinebach, Katarina Bader, Lars Rinsdorf, Nicole Krämer, and Alexander Roßnagel. Desinforma (...)

If you are conducting qualitative and quantitative interviews frequently, you always have to keep these issues in mind. Luckily, most of my research addresses fields without extraordinary ethical implications. It’s in a way different in a current project on spreading disinformation on Telegram, a topic I have been working on with colleagues for some time now⁵. As you may can imagine, it’s complicated to get in touch with radicalized people to talk about their media usage patterns, in particular if they perceive scientists as part of the system they are criticising. Therefore, we have to elaborate very carefully what we are telling people about the aim of our project to attract them to join without neglecting the principal of informed consent.

• 6 https://www.forschungsethik-kmw.de/ethikkommissionen

You will find a board of ethics at almost every university in Germany⁶, because a positive vote of this board is required by almost every big spender of research money in Germany, no matter whether they are private, or state financed. Sometimes it could take its time to get feedback on your request. And sometimes the boards are lacking the specific competencies to decide request from a smaller field like communication science in an appropriate way. But as far as I can see this is no serious threshold to get your projects funded.

• 7 https://www.dgpuk.de/de/ethikkodex-und-ethikausschuss.html

You have been member of the board of Germany’s national communication research association DGPuK⁷ for many years and its president for four years at a time when questions about research ethics gained relative importance. How did you see this topic rise and how did the community react?

• 8 ESF & ALLEA (2011). The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. Ireg: Strasbourg.https://e (...)

During my ten years of service at DGPuK’s board we observed a shift from a quite narrow understanding of research ethics focussing on good practice, research designs, and conducting field research in a proper manner towards a broader understanding, following, and contributing to an international debate about research ethics⁸. The leading questions here were: How can we strengthen the position of the people who are taking part in our research, perceiving them more as partners than as participants? To which extend do we have to reflect the societal impact of our research? And is the working environment in which we are conducting our projects also a subject of research ethics?

• 9 https://www.dgpuk.de/en/code-ethics.html
• 10 https://diskussion.hans-bredow-institut.de/

Our reaction on this discussion was to come up with an entirely new release of our code of conduct in 2015⁹. We took care to do this in an open and discursive process led by our ethics committee. They adapted approaches from other fields of research as well as from other countries and standards created on an international layer. This draft was presented to our general assembly as a living document and starting point for a broader discussion. And this was what actually happened after a vast majority of our members voted for the new code of conduct, in particular in a series of journal articles and replies in one of our leading journals¹⁰. Since then, we’ve seen no request for major changes in our code of conduct. That indicates a broad commitment within our community regarding the main aims of our code of conduct.

• 11 https://www.dgpuk.de/en/mission-statement.html

Yes, that’s true. We had controversial debates on that within our community, for a very good reason, because the freedom of research is in a way effected by this. But on the other hand, we observed a raising awareness for the societal impact of our work, for example our contributions to the debate on digital public spheres. Additionally, scholars dealing with topics like hate speech are themselves threatened by users. This indicates: Whether you like it or not, you can’t stay in your ivory tower. Also, young researchers made successfully clear that their precarious status is not just a managerial but also an ethical challenge. To be very clear at this point: DGPuK is a research association, not a union¹¹. It’s not our job to negotiate in detail about payments etc. But I think we should always be aware of our responsibility to support people finding their place inside as well as outside our scientific community.

• 12 Rat für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsdaten (RatSWD) (2017a). Forschungsethische Grundsätze und Prüfverfah (...)
• 13 Equivalent of the French ANR.

As a research association it was and still is our job to facilitate an ongoing discussion on research ethics and to maintain or even raise a high level of awareness for it. At this point I would like to distinguish a political from a practical layer. On the political layer we try to make sure that the specific needs of communication researchers as social scientists are heard in the national debate on research ethics, or for example on guidelines¹² what ethic committees at universities should do or which ethical requirements have to be fulfilled to get funding from public bodies like the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG¹³). These debates are dominated by medical science or psychologists, and it is important to explain what kind of regulation is appropriate for us as communication researchers. On a practical layer we foster and support projects dealing with ethical aspects of our day-to-day business, for example how to broaden the understanding of ethics in our methodology classes from good practice in field research to the reflection of structural and systemic problems in our community and its institutions.