ASM Update: New Research Edition

22 Nov 2024 - Robert W. Gehl

Bluesky continues to blow up. I hear about it everywhere. It’s so backed up the Brid.gy system has slowed to a crawl.

But instead of focusing yet again on Bluesky, this week I wanted to do something that is long overdue: I want to draw your attention to some new research in alternative social media. You can find these works in the bibliography page of this blog, or reach out to me if you want to join the corresponding Zotero library.

Here will highlight some new papers, mostly focusing on Mastodon (and to a lesser extent the rest of the fediverse). As you will see, there’s a variety of concerns: archiving and curation, moderation, and news sharing. Links are in the titles below.

Also, I am now building an email listserv focused on academic research on alternative social media (broadly conceived). Are you an academic who wants to join the list? We have 50 colleagues there now! If you want to join, contact me (preferably with a university email address) and give me some background info and I can add you to the group.

Frost-Arnold, Karen. 2024. “Beyond Corporate Social Media Platforms: The Epistemic Promises and Perils of Alternative Social Media.” Topoi, October. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-024-10102-2.

ABSTRACT: “In recent years, we have witnessed increased interest in alternatives to the dominant corporate social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter (now X), and TikTok. Tired of disinformation, harassment, privacy violations, and the general degradation of platforms, users and technologists have looked for non-corporate alternatives. Not-for-profit social media platforms emerging from free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) communities based on non-centralized infrastructure have emerged as promising alternatives. For applied epistemology of the internet, these alternative social media platforms present an opportunity to study different ways of producing knowledge together online. This paper evaluates the epistemic potential for such alternative, non-corporate social media. I present an epistemological framework for analyzing the epistemic promises and perils of alternative social media. Then I apply this framework to the case of Mastodon, a federated, open-source microblogging platform. Mastodon’s structure and culture of openness present opportunities to avoid many of the epistemic perils of biased and untrustworthy large corporate platforms. However, Mastodon’s risks include techno-elitism, white ignorance, and isolated, epistemically toxic communities.”

Lister, Pen. 2024. “Creating a City for All of Us: The Possible Role of the Fediverse in Archiving Civic Urban Memory.” Digital Society 3 (3): 53. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44206-024-00137-8. OPEN ACCESS

ABSTRACT: “This paper attempts to build a case for adopting the model of the Fediverse to archive digital citizen-generated urban memory. Examining literature from several relevant fields of debate acts as a pragmatic foundation for reasoning to then outline potential core technical functionality for provision of such an archive, using the Mastodon app as an example. This ‘civic urban memory’ archive is considered as open, curated by citizens themselves and owned by them through civic public ownership in a context of technological sovereignty. Reflecting on issues of citizen self curated and moderated memory collection archives, and the potential for opt-in or anonymous archive posting may offer some mechanisms for fair and open curation, moderation and privacy protection in such archives. Conceptual backdrop for a civic urban memory archive is placed in current debates concerning civic technological platforms acting as a digital public good in a context of a techno-social contract for learning, with a co-constructed shared civic urban memory forming part of open incidental lifelong learning in a future learning city.”

Quian, Alberto, Xosé López-García, and Xosé Soengas-Pérez. 2024. “Periodismo y Redes Sociales Alternativas Del Fediverso: Estudio de La Presencia de Medios Nativos Digitales y Matriciales En Mastodon.” Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, no. 83 (September), 1–40. https://doi.org/10.4185/rlcs-2025-2338.

ABSTRACT: “Introducción: Se analiza la presencia de periódicos en Mastodon, la plataforma social más popular del Fediverso y alternativa a X (Twitter) en este ecosistema de redes descentralizadas e interoperables. Metodología: De una muestra (n=38) de nativos digitales y matriciales de España se obtuvo una submuestra de periódicos (n=20) y cuentas (n=28) en Mastodon. Se identificaron cuentas oficiales y no oficiales, bots y no automatizadas, activas e inactivas, instancias en las que se alojan y accesos directos en los sitios web de los medios. También se identificó la fecha de creación de las cuentas para comprobar si aparecieron antes o después de la compra de Twitter por parte de Elon Musk, operación que disparó la popularidad de Mastodon. Resultados: Identificamos 13 cuentas oficiales (10 nativos y 3 matriciales), ninguna en instancias propias, y 15 cuentas no oficiales (9 matriciales y 6 nativos) conectadas por RSS por administradores de instancias de Mastodon. Los matriciales muestran mayor proporción de cuentas activas que los nativos digitales. La proporción de cuentas automatizadas es alta para ambas categorías. Se observa un “efecto Musk” en la creación de cuentas. Solo elDiario.es y El Salto (nativos digitales) ofrecen accesos en sus sitios web. El País (matricial) tiene la cuenta más antigua y El Salto es el que mayor compromiso muestra con esta red. Discusión: Los medios analizados no aprovechan todo el potencial de la soberanía tecnológica que proporciona Mastodon. Conclusiones: La plantilla usada y los resultados abren vías de investigación sobre una plataforma social (Mastodon) y un ecosistema (Fediverso) apenas explorados en el campo periodístico.”

My rough translation: this paper examines Spanish news organizations’ adooption of Mastodon, particularly after Musk’s purchase of Twitter/X. They find that most Spanish news organizations are present in the form of unofficial automated bots. They also find that “digital native” news organizations are the least likely to have embraced Mastodon. Overall, they find that news organizations are not taking advantage of the possibilities afforded by the fediverse.

Post Tags

• ASM update
• alternative social media
• bibliography