Negotiating gender across online and offline social spaces. A study of cyber-mediated gendered norms, practices and aspirations among women of Moroccan and Turkish descent in France and Germany.

The social landslide provoked by the #metoo movement demonstrated the transnational role of digital communication tools in major societal changes.

At the same time, women of Muslim background face gendered forms of othering within media and popular discourses in Western Europe.

Innovative research is needed to advance our understanding of how women shape gender norms and practices through appropriation and contestation across virtual and non-virtual spaces.

Yet, no empirical study has focused on the post-migration generations with the combined lenses of gender and digital studies.

CyberGen examines the everyday uses of digital spaces and social media by women of Moroccan and Turkish descent, in France and Germany, in relation to gendered norms, practices and aspirations through an original methodology combining a netnography (data mining of publicly available social media data) with ethnographic methods.

CyberGen breaks new ground for understanding how gendered norms, attitudes and practices fluctuate across digital and non-digital social spaces.

CyberGen objectives are (1) to conceptualise patterns of engagement with digital spaces by women of Turkish and Moroccan backgrounds in European contexts; (2) to advance our understanding of transnational and local dimensions of gendered digital engagements within post-migration communities; (3) to understand the articulation between the online circulation of gendered ideas and everyday practices through a doubly comparative case-study of two communities in two different national settings; (4) to produce original and timely data for academic and policy-making realms on gendered norms and attitudes allowing for the de-construction of essentialising accounts; and (5) to contribute to the development of the emerging field of digital migration studies by theorising gendered digital engagements and setting up a new research path.

CyberGen promises to inform several EU programmes in the fields of integration and gender equality.