First, read:

• MSU Human Research Protection (HRP) Manual, 8-6. Revisions to an Approved Project
• APPLICATIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED VIA THE MSU IRBS ONLINE APPLICATION SYSTEM.  This form has been provided as a reference document to assist in developing your IRB application.

Then, answer:

What kinds of changes to my research study require the submission of a revision application? (msu.edu)

“Any proposed change or revision to an approved project that affects human subjects (with certain limited exceptions) must be reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board prior to implementation of the change. These changes can be minor or non-minor changes.”

This includes, but is not limited to:

• Alteration of study design, methodology, or recruitment methods
  • The major change to the study design is that I will now be using content analysis of fans’ and athletes’ tweets.  I will embed myself within the “twittershpere” as an “active researcher.”  I can communicate with athletes and fans through two accounts: @JohnGirdwood and @StudySports_net.  I can participate in discussions and ask questions directly to athletes and fans.  At the same time, I can passively observe participants.
  • The methodology has been clarified now as a ethnography.
  • Recruitment for participation as a “tweeter” is passive.  I will not ask tweeters to participate.  Rather, they are already tweeting.
• Changes to any instruments, including surveys and questionnaires
  • I will not alter the online survey or the in-person interview.
  • I will add the use of players’ and fans’ tweets.
  • I will collect the data that is publicly available on twitter.com and its sub-directories.
• Changes to consent documents
  • There will be no changes to the survey or interview consent.
  • Since Twitter is a public forum
• Changes to the study population
  • The study population will not change to omit any of the original participants.
  • The study population will expand to include fans.
• Changes in funding
  • There is no change in funding.
• Addition/Deletion of investigators
  • There is no change to investigators
• Alteration of Project Title
  • Formerly: Racism in sports: A comparison of collegiate athletes’ descriptions of self
  • Change to: Racism in sports: Comparing descriptions of collegiate athletes
• Addition/Deletion of research performance sites
  • There will be no change in site.
• Overall, the change to the research is quite minimal.  In the original IRB application, I stated that I would be utilizing public websites to assemble content to analyze.  The content describes athletes.  Now, I will be using additional publicly available content (Twitter and media news article with comments).

NOTE: In the points above, I referred to participants as “tweeters” and the forum as twitter.com however I will be analyzing a series of public comments on a variety of public media including freep.com, lsj.com, statenews.com, and other mainstream mass media outlets that allow comments on web published news articles.  I use “tweeters” and “Twitter” as generally meaning: anyone who uses a public forum, viewable to any American with unrestricted internet access, to make a comment on a public occurrence or situation.  I will differentiate the intricacies of Twitter versus mass media comments in my paper.

(all bullets are from msu.edu)

Potential article(s) to use:

Virtual internet communities and commercial success: individual and community-level theory grounded in the atypical case of TimeZone.com

Chinese Women and the Cyberspace – By Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce, Khun Eng Kuah