"The Failed Migration of Academic Twitter"
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"The Failed Migration of Academic Twitter"
Academic Twitter was great, & it breaks my heart that the community I found there has done so little to rebuild on Mastodon, even tho Mast is far better. I loved learning abt new research & pubs (& occasionally posting abt my own). A fair # of people migrated to Mast but most didn't stay, at least in my field of literary studies.
What can academics do to build & rebuild academic exchange on Mastodon?
#Academia @LitStudies
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Marcello Serireplied to Robert Dale Parker last edited by
@RobertDaleParker @antoinechambertloir I think one problem is the fragmentation that followed, different communities (and sometimes some of their parts) just scattered across various socials. People I was following, for example are now partly on Twitter, Bluesky, LinkedIn, here or simply shut down their socials altogether. I don’t see an easy way to change this.
Another part of the problem is that it is harder to grow a community on mastodon (or Bluesky) compare to old Twitter. Not just because one starts almost from scratch; the suggestion algorithms on Twitter were doing a good job in helping to reach out to new people.
The reluctance of some institutions to move is also not helping to increase the credibility and use of some of the other socials.
I hope I am wrong and that the current behaviour from Musk will push again for a change, but I don’t see it happening, at least in my small garden.
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Albert Cardonareplied to Robert Dale Parker last edited by
Post the kind of posts you want to see. Tell your colleagues. Email links to good posts to colleagues. Mention your handle in Mastodon in conference talks as a way to reach you.
All of that was done to promote Twitter, unwittingly. Now we can do it purposefully, until it becomes self-sustaining.
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Philipp Steinkrügerreplied to Robert Dale Parker last edited by
@RobertDaleParker
My field (philosophy) was one of the slowest to move from Twitter to begin with and has now basically disappeared from Mastodon altogether. I even wrote a bot (@icymi_philosophy) to facilitate discovery, but nothing helped.
I personally see Mastodon's failure to provide basic tools (like quote boosts) and discovery algorithms as the main issue, so I'm not sure what we as an academic community can do. I put some hope into the fedi-bs bridge to at least increase the #s a bit. -
I very much agree... The exchange on Twitter evolved over a long time, maybe nudged people into it that otherwise weren't highly interested in Social Media at all (but joined as they felt everyone else is doing it), and then after Twitter-activity went down just were not keen to go somewhere else...
So, big concerted 'migrations' are rare, communities rather need to develop with time... on the platform that then most active members agree to be active on.
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Preston MacDougallreplied to Robert Dale Parker last edited by
@RobertDaleParker #Billionaires are never the answer. Be patient, continue posting the types of content you hope to see more of on #AcademicMastodon , and be sure to let students know about the #billionaire -free #fediverse.
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Alexander Karnreplied to Preston MacDougall last edited by
@ChemicalEyeGuy @RobertDaleParker
Never going back to the world of venture capital and reality-twisting algorithms. Never going to invest myself in a platform where I am the product.
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Tim Chambersreplied to Robert Dale Parker last edited by
@RobertDaleParker This should be a whole #Fedforum topic. Are you thinking of going this Thursday, Robert? cc: @fediforum
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Julian Fietkaureplied to Robert Dale Parker last edited by
@RobertDaleParker
- Lean into field-specific discovery à la "Academics on Mastodon" (I'm trying to work on easier software for this, but I have a lot of projects ongoing)
- Be a role model on here (post about research, about conferences, other academic activities...)
-Be a role model out there (put your Mastodon handle on your presentation slides, invite people you know, organize small fedi meetups in academic contexts)I just ran a lil fedi meetup at an HCI conference, worked a treat
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@tchambers @RobertDaleParker @fediforum ISTR we did discuss something similar last session, during the March #FediForum ...
Ah, there it is:
But yeah, it would be good to go more in depth into the observations the researchers found.
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@xankarn @ChemicalEyeGuy Luckily there aren’t any billionaires not reality twisting algorithms on Bluesky