Some researchers of user-generated content make an effort to disguise the public comments they quote so as to not bring additional scrutiny to the comments’ authors. Do researchers actually do what they claim? How do they do so? And does it work?

We’ve found that researchers often mistakenly leave quotes in the clear, lack guidance on how to best perform ethical disguise, and consequently fail at the task. We therefore provide recommendations for ethical disguise and provide links to ongoing work to understand and improve this research practice.

Please see our consequent recommendations on disguising online sources.