Protecting individuals’ identities is a continual challenge for researchers in the data age, when individuals can be easily identified based on their statements, images, and even their grammatical tendencies in writing or speaking. How can researchers using social science methods protect the privacy or anonymity of participants? One solution is to rebuild raw data into composite forms that present and/or evoke the researchers’ interpretations but do not use original materials gathered from participants. This is done primarily at later stages of the research when presenting findings. Using the strength of qualitative approaches, the researcher can transform verbal and visual materials gathered in field observations, interviews, and focus groups, as well as larger datasets generated through data scraping. In this masterclass, Professor Annette Markham presents her concept of ‘Ethical Fabrication’ followed by a workshop where participants practice techniques for building composites as narrative vignettes. The workshop will conclude with a brainstorming session on the practice and types of ethical fabrication in the era of generative AI. While it might seem easy to consider fabricating composite accounts in an automated fashion with cloud-based generative AI (ChatGPT, for example), this practice is ethical risky at present, as it essentially shares the raw dataset […]