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Paper short abstract:

Social media challenges the silence surrounding sexual education in Egypt. Online initiatives address a variety of issues. The paper aims to explore those dynamics through qualitative methods. Challenges and opportunities arise from the author's involvement and ethical considerations.

Paper long abstract:

Absent from schools and considered taboo within families and society, sexual education has traditionally been viewed as innate and instinctive. However, with the rise of social media as an educational platform, a new space has emerged to challenge this silence, allowing online initiatives to fill the void. Influencers, bloggers, and even medical professionals have taken the lead in discussing topics considered taboo in conventional social spaces. Social media not only serves as a medium for transmitting information but also plays a significant role in sexual socialization. These initiatives, primarily led by women, have become essential sources of Arabic sex literacy. In some cases, individuals seek help and advice through anonymous confessions on pages or groups considered safe spaces. These platforms serve a wide range of purposes, from reporting sexual violence and raising awareness to providing sex education and promoting sexual cosmetic surgeries. Alongside traditional and religious norms, a new discourse on sexual and reproductive health and rights is emerging. These diverse ideas coexist and interact on social media, reflecting the evolving dynamics of contemporary Egypt. The objective of this paper is to examine, through ethnographic immersion and reflexivity, how these virtual social spaces function. Qualitative methods such as participant observation, interviews, and textual analysis can provide a comprehensive description and explanation of these interactions. Nevertheless, my presence as an Egyptian woman, and my prior involvement in these virtual spaces and groups discussing sexuality presents challenges and opportunities in terms of accessing field sites, analyzing ethnographic data, and research ethics.

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Paper short abstract:

A hybrid research (in situ and online) of protest movements offers unprecedented challenges for an anthropologist. However, becoming part of a virtual community and studying its members also during face to face encounters can add fresh new intakes to issues of great significance for society.

Paper long abstract:

Cyberspace has often been a shelter for various groups menaced by political oppression or just by public shaming. Religious, ethnic, sexual or any other minority group can find on the web a realm of relief but also a battle camp. In the same time, Social Media has become the main resource for information and communication. Both audience and news professionals rely more and more on the insightfulness of the contributive content of Facebook, X, Instagram or You Tube. Studying in situ and online these types of cybersolidarities offers unprecedented challenges for an anthropologist. This paper aims to reveal such challenges met while conducting fieldwork on three social and political protest campaigns in Romania. First one was supporting an environmental cause (Save Rosia Montana), second one decried government corruption (#REZIST) and third one gathered anti-vaccine supporters during COVID-19 pandemic. Field research that involves participating in protest movements comprise certain risks that may hinder or contaminate data collection. Protest crowds are inherently affected by suspicion towards possible "infiltrators" and social researcher can fit the profile. On the other hand, emotional involvement in support for the cause can affect researcher’s objectivity. As can the lack of a good filter against misinformation and manipulation – which can occur on both forms of public manifestation (street protests and online activity).

All-in-all, becoming part of a virtual community and studying its members also during face to face encounters can add fresh new intakes to issues of great significance for society.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper presents on how digital tools particularly social media outlets enable Nenets to communicate to broader audience. Through an observational approach, I examine how and for what purpose certain digital output is created. I will present on benefits and limitations of collecting digital data.

Paper long abstract:

Digital platforms like Instragram and Youtube allow for passive and active participation with the content. However, even with passive participation, a researcher like myself , can be fully immersed in a discourse of a specific group. I am examining how Nenets use social media to unite, educate and promote their cultural identity. Social media has a vast reach and therefore is actively utilized by this indigenous group.

There is a lot of criticism of social media, however social media also carried a lot of power then if come to promoting and advancing groups' goals. Indigenous groups using social media can strengthen its cultural and ethnic ties to the community through content, and encourage a sense of belonging for those who are removed from cultural practices. However, depending on the social media outlet their voices can be silenced and pages closed.

Nonetheless, with all the limitations and state monitoring, Nenets are still able to produce content that aims to educate the global public on their culture, strengthen community ties and create digital space of belonging. Is it also evident that digital means of communication and dissemination is a preferred method by youth, therefore researching how social media is used and the expansion and diversification of messaging is essential to understanding the evolution of Nenets’ cultural values.

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Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork on digital community-building efforts in rural Japan, this paper addresses how anthropologists can employ “ethnographic place-making” to maintain spatial-temporal focus while adapting to the fluidity and complexities inherent in social worlds.

Paper long abstract:

The penetration of digital technology into everyday life has transformative effects on the boundaries of communities and ethnographic endeavours. This paper seeks to illustrate the potential efficacy of "ethnographic place-making" in response to this transformation. It explores key questions such as: Where is the ethnographic place? How does one engage in place-making? Who constitutes the community in that place, and how can meaningful connections be established? How can place-making enhance the processes of observation, note-taking, analysis, and writing-up?

The insights presented here stem from reflections during ongoing fieldwork in multiple rural areas in Japan, where I investigate the participation of digitally connected populations in local community building to counteract regional decline. I conceptualize my ethnographic place as both a geographic and ideational symbol, evoking social interactions across different spaces (e.g., digital and physical) among diverse individuals (e.g., digital community members and local residents).

While digitalization has the potential to broaden the scope of communities, my findings indicate that digitally connected individuals and local residents engage in parallel community building. This discovery prompts a reconsideration of the temporal-spatial dimensions of presence and connectivity. I posit that place-making serves as a tool for ethnographers to maintain focus while adapting to the fluidity and complexities inherent in social worlds.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper will question the methodological and epistemological changes in Anthropology of religion induced by the “digital revolution”. A “digital Fieldwork study” of online “parody” and “fake” cults will serve as case study for this discussion.

Paper long abstract:

The paper will question the methodological and epistemological changes in Anthropology of religion induced by the “digital revolution”. The issue of continuity and ruptures in “Fieldwork study” in digital era will be raised and discussed on the backgrounds of a specific case-study, I have already worked on (Obadia, 2015, 2023), i.e. online “parody” and “fake” cults like the Church of the flying spaghetti monster but compared to other online cults (to be distinguished from “cults online, see helland, 2002) . This is will be the occasion to explore new avenues for the study of religious phenomenon, and appraise the relevance of anthropology in the context of heavy digitization of societies.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper is about how the simultaneous online and offline observation of political events enabled me to experience these occasions as online/offline ones. It allowed me to understand these episodes through the contextual connections and contrasts between the actual event and the related posting.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is about how the double – online and offline – observation of political events enabled me to carve out an online/offline ethnographic space of investigation and reflection in my doctoral research. My PhD in Social Anthropology – awarded in 2023 by Queen’s University Belfast – was about everyday social media engagement about Northern Ireland’s politics. In my fieldwork, I attended several political events in Northern Ireland and simultaneously tracked the posting about them on Twitter through a smartphone. The strategy deepened my understanding of how events and current affairs were processed by the online exchanges. Furthermore, it allowed me to follow demonstrations, parades and public meetings in the ‘traffic’ between the online and offline (Boellstorff 2012). It was a ‘traffic’ activated by users in their drive to promote their (ethno)political interpretations about the episodes in question. At the same time that this ‘traffic’ contextually connected online and offline, it also made clear their distinct regimes of expression and relationality. In my double observation, the online clearly referred to what was happening in the streets. It could indeed interfere in the perceptions of the event or its developments themselves. However, in the screen of my smartphone, the piling up of texts, images and links destabilised the space-time I was experiencing in the offline, as the paper details. In the boundaries between online and offline, in and through the connections and contrasts of the referential ‘traffic’, I could experience several of these events as online/offline ones.

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Paper short abstract:

The digital dimension of the multilayered and transnational community of Tenrikyo Europe Centre, situated in a Parisian suburb, proved pivotal in comprehending this expansive social milieu encompassing multiple locations, partially manifested through and facilitated by online platforms.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the insights and holistic understanding of the multilayered and transnational community of the principal European centre of the Japanese new religion of Tenrikyo, situated in a Parisian suburb, facilitated by digital ethnography.

Although the majority of the “core” people connected to this center were Japanese Tenrikyo followers born and raised in the faith living in the Paris region, its wider “community” also included multiple nationalities, countries of residence, and even religious identities, amongst other differences. Despite such spatial, personal, and social diversities, they together formed an interconnected social group that constituted an unbound community which involved a complex, ever-developing symphony of social flows and webs of connection.

The digital dimension of this research proved pivotal in comprehending this expansive social milieu encompassing multiple locations, partially manifested through and facilitated by online platforms. Strategically integrating both in-person and online observations, this research acknowledges the growing influence of digitalization in shaping contemporary social landscapes. Leveraging online interactions served to reduce geographic constraints, rendering insights into diverse locations more accessible. Furthermore, given that the imagined mythos of the group, primarily rooted in the conceptualization of the Tenrikyo faith, is shaped through online means, active inquiry into the online component of this faith-based group was merited. Through a nuanced examination of these components, this paper contributes to the broader discourse on evolving methodologies and spatial boundaries in the digital age within the field of anthropology.

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Paper short abstract:

Increased digitization has meant that gender inequities and misogynistic ideologies are being replicated in digital spaces and gained virality. This paper illustrates the challenges of researching online misogyny as a phenomenon that has transgressed the boundary of the physical and digital.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, significant attention has been drawn to digital spaces where contestations around feminism, and traditional gender roles have occurred. Given that the infrastructure of our technologies is designed with inherent biases and inequities, it has an impact on how researchers and scholars may use technologies to successfully analyze and produce meaningful work.

Feminism is an issue that receives significant backlash in Bangladesh and is a major driver of conversations in public groups on Facebook often dressed in religious and nationalistic undertones for the preservation of state and society. In order to address and understand the nature of anti-feminist backlash, qualitative researchers conducted a research study from August 2021 - January 2022 to analyze the language of misogyny expressed in the form of reels, videos, memes, posts, and reshares from famous backlash enactors in the Bangladeshi manosphere.

In the context of the global south, where digital infrastructures are privy to an atmosphere of surveillance boiling down from public places to digital platforms in the form of strident censorship laws regulating content online, this is a key point of contention researchers must grapple with. The paper will explore the opportunities and challenges in deep diving into understanding anti-feminist backlash as a phenomenon which has crossed the boundaries of physical vs. digital. The researchers share their personal experiences, challenges, and ethical quandaries associated with conducting participant observation and interactions in social media spaces, alongside their understanding of how communities are formed and sustained in these online platforms.

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Paper short abstract:

How does one conduct traditional ethnographic research of contemporary nomadic groups when the ‘place’ of study can change on a whim? This paper shares the experience of a vanlife researcher in creating a multimodal mobile ethnography combining intensive fieldwork with social media interactions.

Paper long abstract:

How does one conduct traditional ethnographic research of contemporary nomadic groups when the ‘place’ of study can change on a whim? When the closure of national borders, financial limitations, and bureaucratic ritualism constrains the ability to design and carry-out a research plan that meets the traditional idea of an ethnography? In the case of my own research as an international PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne in Australia, such aforementioned constraints left the possibility of pursuing a long-term traditional ethnography in a static place far out of reach. Rather, it became clear that I would have to be innovative and creative in my approach to data collection with the further possibility of the Covid-19 pandemic causing more disruptions to my own mobility in the field. Thus, I designed a multimodal mobile ethnography that consisted of three main methods for data collection to develop a thicker description of vanlife culture in the United States: First, I entered the wide spanning field of the Pacific Northwest to attend various vanlife gatherings to establish rapport and network with community wherein I lived in a Minicooper car full-time over a period of three months. Second, I conducted semi-structured interviews in the field and online via Zoom or direct message message audio. Finally, I maintained connections with dozens of nomads over the course of another twelve months via the social media platform Instagram, viewing their posted story reels, leaving comments, having direct message discussions, or 'liking' their shared content to show support.