Ethical Issues Of Interracial Youtube

In recent years, interracial relationships have become the centre of media attraction, in its most prevalent form through YouTube. Interracial couples on YouTube have, to some extent created their own community and use this technological platform to represent their social lives. Interracial couples use a variety of technological mediums such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as alternative social media sites in order to present their social lives. The creation of interracial couple channels on YouTube has grown on a global scale with mixed ethnicity couples around the world, partaking in this phenomenon through the creation of their own accounts. These types of accounts attract millions of subscribers and gain many views. The portrayal of

This is the result of YouTube videos, are available for the public to view, however these users, post videos to the YouTube community to be studied and may not necessarily want their personal videos to be used in studies. This ethical issue is discussed in great detail by Bryman (2012:680) who argues that conducting research online,‘makes it difficult for researchers to protect the confidentiality of data that they collect, since others can identify identities even if the researcher conceals them’. Bryman (2012:680). Youtube is however a public space and users are aware that the content they post is open for anyone to view and this to some extent contributes to the growth of the interracial Youtube community as increasing numbers of subscribers and view on their channels is the primary aim of users posting videos on

Conducting these interviews = will allow the researcher to delve deeper into the lives of these couples, and discuss key issues such as racism, discrimination and other social issues faced by interracial couples and how the platform of YouTube allows these users to express their inner thoughts and emotions and how this helps them in portraying their daily lives. The main purpose of using unstructured interviews will allow the researcher to understand why the users became a part of the YouTube community, what makes them different from the other users, and also what kinds of topics are discussed on their channels and why they choose to speak on those topics. Tackling the ethical issues which, may arise from conducting these interviews is important. Some of the questions asked, surrounding the personal lives of these individuals may be quiet personal and can elicit responses which the interviewee would prefer is kept confidential and their identity remains anonymous. Protecting the identity of the interviews and keeping their answers confidential will be a key ethical issue to tackle. Conducting unstructured interviews will however allow the researcher to establish a rapport with the participants in the study and will help the researcher to discover the ‘true self’ of the participants and not necessarily the way they portray