Paper short abstract:

Taking into account the challenges of an online-offline ethnographic fieldwork among Moroccan Islamist youth, I will discuss my ethical and methodological standpoints as an early stage researcher of a European project working on sensitive issues in a conflictual milieu.

Paper long abstract:

This paper stems from my current PhD research on the impact of digitization and multilingualism in the Islamist movements in Morocco, developed in the framework of the program H2020 MSCA-ITN MIDA ("Mediating Islam in the digital age"). As part of a European project, publishing data in Open Access platforms is strongly encouraged. However, asking for publishing authorizations and sharing contents can be really challenging in an environment such as of social media platforms (Facebook, You Tube, Telegram, and so on) where privacy policies are constantly changing and are often unclear, where "identities" are fluid and volatile, and where the topics discussed are often in tension with the established political regime. Where are the boundaries of an ethical standpoint when the researcher has to deal on the one hand with a sensitive fieldwork and on the other with specific requests as part of an international research project? Moreover, dealing with a politico-religious community often surveilled online and offline by the Moroccan regime, lifts not only methodological problems (gaining trust when entering the field), but also ethical dilemmas (preserving the interlocutor´s identity, and the safety of the researcher´s data). This paper aims at bringing at the roundtable these different issues, related both, not only to the ethnographic case I am exploring, but also to my experience as a researcher within a European project.