Following change in Twitter’s ownership and subsequent changes to content moderation policies, many in academia looked to move their discourse elsewhere and migration to Mastodon was pursued by some. Our study looks at the dynamics of this migration. Utilizing publicly available user account data, we track the posting activity of academics on Mastodon over a one year period. Our analyses reveal significant challenges sustaining user engagement on Mastodon due to its decentralized structure as well as competition from other platforms such as Bluesky and Threads. The movement lost momentum after an initial surge of enthusiasm as most users did not maintain their activity levels, and those who did faced lower levels of engagement compared to Twitter. Our findings highlight the challenges involved in transitioning professional communities to decentralized platforms, emphasizing the need for focusing on migrating social connections for long-term user engagement.
Hot take of the day: academia doesn’t need social media.
I don’t think this is true, maybe not at all.
Academia, by its nature, is socially exclusionary. So what they want/need is the ability to have flexibly closed spaces as well as very public spaces. Big-social never really provided that and in many ways I think academia is being kinda left behind by social media.
But how else will you know if your neighbour’s cousin’s co-worker’s massage therapist’s father likes your kitchen utensils?
All fields need an information sharing platform. Historically, it was in person at conferences or conventions and such. Now it’s online and continuous.
Does it need to be online and continuous?
Yeah, I think that they do need a public and easily accessed place to present information, but I can’t for the life of me (per the article) see why engagement would matter much at all in that context.
It doesn’t need to exist at all. But being online and continuous obviously speeds communication.