Justice-oriented Research in Peace and Conflict Studies in Times of Social Distancing

Abstract

Not only since the COVID-19 pandemic, many research processes had already been increasingly digitized to maintain global ex-change of information efficiently. For years, scientific empirical studies have been conducted in politically sensitive contexts using digitally mediated methods, entailing numerous risks as well as potentials. One goal of digital research is to also capture marginal-ized voices. With emerging risks related to digital research, such as digital surveillance and social media monitoring by adversaries (e.g., the military in Myanmar), research needs to be more thoughtfully conducted. Considering research ethics, an evolving discrepancy between security measures and values of social jus-tice, such as accessibility and representation, appears as most data-secure applications are not used widely and offers such as “Free Basics” entice people to use rather data-unsecure applica-tions. Reflecting on this existing discrepancy in ethical require-ments, I illustrate challenges of the German research context re-lated to digitally conducted research focusing on overt conflictive social contexts.