From Twitter to Mastodon: Platform migration as political mobilization
Speaker: (opens in a new window)Saif Shahin (Tilburg University)
Wednesday, October 2, 14:00–14:45 (Irish time)
Please register (opens in a new window)here to receive the link and password to the online meeting and information on the room at UCD.
Abstract: Mastodon, a relatively new federated social network, was one of the main beneficiaries when users started leaving Twitter en masse following Elon Musk’s takeover in October 2022. Many users tweeted out their Mastodon accounts to let their Twitter followers know where to find them: some even changed their Twitter handles to Mastodon usernames. In response, Musk suspended Mastodon’s official Twitter account on December 15 and disallowed hyperlinks to the rival network. This study examines the calls on Twitter to migrate to Mastodon in the aftermath of Musk’s buyout as connective action—the altered logic of political mobilization in the age of digital networking (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013). It draws on the topic modeling of a corpus of over half-a-million tweets referring to Mastodon, posted over four weeks leading up to the ban (November 18-December 15). Preliminary analysis indicates tweets about Mastodon were often a “call to action,” not only encouraging Twitter users to migrate but also stressing why Mastodon was better and offering glimpses of life on an open-source social network, including its challenges. In addition, Mastodon became a symbol of American Liberalism or, more precisely, of anti-Conservatism as the tweets poured scorn on right-wing figures like Donald Trump.
About the speaker: (opens in a new window)Saif Shahin (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor of digital culture at Tilburg University, Netherlands. His research takes a critical look at data and technology as sociocultural phenomena, the production of power in digital discourses, and the politics of online identity construction. He works with qualitative, quantitative, and computational methods of research — including machine learning, social network analysis, and sentiment analysis. His work has been published in high-impact journals including New Media and Society; Information, Communication & Society; Social Science Computer Review; and The International Journal of Press/Politics. He also serves as an associate editor with Journal of Information Technology and Politics.