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Designing Research on Radicalisation Using Social Media Content: Data Protection Regulations as Challenges and Opportunities

The analysis of data retrieved from social media has become more and more important. However, working with social media and audio-visual formats as data sources has its own challenges. Communication patterns are increasingly diverse shifting to closed spaces and between platforms, not only but in particular for those who are radicalized or becoming radicalized. Consequently, ethical and legal issues are pertinent to discourses about the feasibility and acceptance of scientific studies in online environments. However, despite limitations and challenges, legal and moral guidelines provide also opportunities and flexibility particularly for researchers aiming to explore virtual space. This chapter summarizes the current debates on weighing legal and moral principles. It provides guidance of the various requirements of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and related ethical considerations researchers face when designing empirical research using data from social media platforms. In a solution-oriented way, we give an overview of some key ethical and legal considerations that can serve as a basis for prudently designed empirical research projects. The overview is informed by our research experiences in the field of Salafist jihadist radicalisation in Germany.