Doing Biographical Research – Ethical Dilemmas in Changing Social Contexts.

When biographical research started rapidly developing in last decades of the 20^th cent. ethical problems of biographical interviewing were focused more on the very relationship between a narrator and interviewer, the promise of anonymity and methodological responsibility and mutual trust. Recently, the dynamic changes in different spheres of social life (especially commercialisation of science, digitalisation of data, explosion of social media) have influenced definitions of research situation and approach to results in social sciences. Some new standards have been implemented from hard sciences, the research situation has been shaped by circumstances related to wider cultural changes which can be recognized as a sort of cultural shift especially in the sphere of new media communication. In my presentation I would like to comment on these phenomena. I try to discuss such problems as e.g.: consequences of digital archiving, changes in social definitions of public vs. private spheres, the expected style of doing research with the strong expectation to disseminate results or, last but not least, possible consequences of implementing informed consent with illusory expectation that it removes the danger of ethical dilemmas.