Accessing and Using Data without Informed Consent: Guiding Principles from Conversation Analysis

We critically reflect on ethical challenges of making, accessing, and using audio/video recordings for social research in which participants have not and/or cannot provide informed consent. We distinguish between two types of data: recordings for which informed consent for use for research purposes would have been feasible but was not obtained, for example, “classic” or “legacy” data collected during the early development of Conversation Analysis; and recordings for which informed consent for use for research purposes was, or will be, impossible to secure, for example, when participants’ contact details are unavailable or seeking consent could pose risks to researchers or other participants. We propose a set of guiding principles for the collection, access, and use of audio/video data for which participants’ consent for use for research purposes is absent.