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Article History

Accepted: 25 August 2024

First Online: 19 September 2024

Declarations

:

: The research began following ethics approval from Massey University, with the ethics application having been deemed low risk (application approval number: 4000025322).

: No consent was required for this project as the data referred to in this study came from an open public domain, the AmberCutieForum. As Rodham and Gavin () state: Messages which are posted on such open forums are public acts, deliberately intended for public consumption, which means that researchers need not take more than ‘normal precautions’ when accessing such data. We therefore argue that as long as researchers’ maintain the confidentiality of the individuals who have ‘posted’ and record data in a manner that would not cause personal identification, it is not necessary to seek consent of individuals using open message boards because ethical boundaries are not crossed (p. 94–95). It’s important to note that forum users typically go by alias/industry names, but effort has been made by the first author to paraphrase forum quotes to reduce identifiability.

: Data was obtained from posters on a publicly open forum, AmberCutieForum, as these posts were published publicly consent is effectively granted through their own publication of such materials.

: The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.