Engaging with incels: reflexivity, identity and the female cybercrime ethnographic researcher: Reflexivity, Identity and the Female Cybercrime Ethnographic Researcher

This chapter considers the challenges and risks faced by the female cybercrime researcher when undertaking online ethnographic study, and the measures undertaken to mitigate them. These include managing and cultivating multiple identities and roles online for personal protection and to avoid pejorative impacts upon research, assimilating into different online environments to access participants and data, dealing with sensitive and offensive materials and content, and wrestling with moral tensions. The chapter will address the usefulness of the researcher adopting a reflexive approach through the process and draws upon the author’s first-hand experience of undertaking sensitive cybercrime research and having to carefully consider her position, in this instance as a woman researching self-identified misogynists online.