Ya hasra: An exploratory study on online communities of moroccan jews, christians and muslims dealing with their common cultural heritage

The purpose of this paper is to present preliminary results for the study of online communities of Moroccan Jews, Christians, and Muslims, dealing with their shared cultural heritage in social networks. The phenomenon of non-conflictual inter-religious online communities appears to be limited to the Moroccan nostalgia groups and received marginal attention in social networks research. Drawing on literature covering nostalgia and information behavior, a mixed-methods approach was followed using questionnaires with closed and open questions. Descriptive statistics and qualitative data were collected. Although several studies were published on the shared cultural heritage of Moroccan Muslims, Christian, and Jews and on Information Behavior, there is a lack of research on the impact of nostalgia on information sharing in these online communities. Using multicultural Facebook groups, this research aims to shed light on the impact of nostalgia on cultural heritage preservation, in online communities initiated by Muslims, Christians, or Jews, by studying how nostalgia may increase information sharing. Preliminary results revealed that the primary motivation for information sharing in these online communities is the preservation of the common cultural heritage and the need to renew ties between friends and communities of different religions. Some results suggest that nostalgia of the collective cultural past could be used to respond to the present needs of the community.