Aim The aim was to identify how ethical issues have been handled in theses written by undergraduate students in the field of nursing.

Background The act of gathering information online to become an ‘expert’ by locating useful advice for oneself – and others – is a fairly new phenomenon. How virtual caring and nursing can contribute to people’s health as a resource is growing as an area of interest within the field of caring sciences.

Methods A qualitative content analysis of 21 bachelor theses in nursing science was conducted. The analysis focused on how ethical issues concerning gathering data in cyberspace were handled.

Findings The results show that the students chose very complex health issues when gathering data in cyberspace. The results reveal asymmetries between the researcher and subjects behind the data (the bloggers), both in terms of knowledge as well as in relation to the resources available to them.

Conclusions There is a need to discuss cyberspace as a source of data, including ethical, ontological, and epistemological issues. Based on the findings, we provide a tentative outline of how data from cyberspace can be used by nursing researchers and instructors at all levels in the field.