This editorial discusses workable and unworkable ethical guidelines and shares some narratives about the negotiation of ethical permissions for conducting applied linguistic research using texts from social media platforms. Some of these are from my own experience of over 35 years researching online language use, especially codemixing, alias translanguaging, and practices in language and content subject classes. Among a number of themes emerging from these narratives, the universal applicability of ethical principles and stances needs to be questioned; also, the positioning of the researcher(s): participant- or non-participant-observers, or ‘lurkers’. Another issue is the status of online texts, such as those in public online discussion forums, where participants often use pseudonyms: should they be considered as published material and referenced accordingly? Should the pseudonyms appear in cited texts where the content may be contentious? The narratives are presented as vignettes, and it is hoped that we can move beyond the basic dualities of ethical vs. unethical towards a more nuanced analysis.
James McLellan (2025) studied this question.