[Air-L] Mastodon Research CFP, June 2023

[nathaniel tkacz]

Hi Petter,

Thanks for raising these important points. I hope our event will be an
opportunity to think through some of them with others while recognising, of
course, that this is very much a question for Mastodon users.

N

On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 4:49 PM Petter Ericson <pettter at cs.umu.se> wrote:

> Dear list, and symposium organizers
>
> Though outside my research area, the event looks very interesting!
>
> However, as a Mastodon user, I would just like to raise the issue of
> appropriation of data in the study of Mastodon users, and the importance of
> consent. Keep in mind that many (if not all) users that have moved from
> traditional social media onto Mastodon and the broader fediverse have done
> so at least in part because of concerns over what the things they post
> online will be used for.
>
> As such, I would argue that to an _even greater extent than usual_, it is
> important for researchers working on Mastodon to be careful about the study
> of user-posted data, in particular content that has been federated from
> other servers, and _including_ posts made with "public" visibility. It's
> also worth considering the (disproportionately?) large cohort of LGBTQ+
> people on the fediverse, and what impact your research may have on
> marginalized people more broadly, even such folks living in (for the
> moment) "open" and "tolerant" countries.
>
> Briefly: Keep your studies opt-in if at all possible, and be especially
> careful about releasing any datasets of more or less indiscriminately
> gathered data.
>
> Hoping you will all have a great event in Warwick!
>
> All the best,
>
> /P
>
> On 15 March, 2023 - nathaniel tkacz via Air-L wrote:
>
> > *Call for Presentations *
> >
> > Mastodon: Research Symposium and Tool Exploration Workshop
> >
> > Date: 22nd and 23rd of June, 2023
> >
> > Place: University of Warwick, UK + online (hybrid event, GMT time)
> >
> >
> >
> > Although established in 2016, Mastodon grew rapidly in the second half of
> > 2022. From an estimated 500,000 monthly active users (MAUs) it reached an
> > apparent peak of 2.5 million MAUs in December 2022 before settling back
> to a
> > reported 1.4 million as of late January 2023. The rise of Mastodon cannot
> > be separated from the tragi-spectacle of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover,
> and
> > this raises new questions about the relationship between social media
> > platforms and their alternatives. How should we understand the
> significance
> > of Mastodon, both as an alternative to Twitter and in its own right?
> >
> >
> > We know Mastodon has long appealed to users invested in the
> infrastructural
> > politics of open-source and federated architectures. But less is known
> about
> > Mastodon’s forms of sociality and how its infrastructural characteristics
> > shape this sociality. Can Mastodon sociality scale without the viral
> > dynamics of algorithmic feeds? Should we even evaluate Mastodon based on
> > its potential for growth on the scale of the commercial platforms? Are
> its new
> > users simply on a Twitter sabbatical? How has the influx of users altered
> > the dynamics of Mastodon?
> >
> >
> > Mastodon users are spared from the advertising-derived attention economy,
> > but ads are relatively low down on the scale of undesirable
> > interactions on social
> > media. How is Mastodon handling racism, trolling, and content
> moderation? Is
> > there a specificity to the violence and abuse experienced on Mastodon as
> > compared to its commercial counterparts?
> >
> >
> > Mastodon introduces a novel level of social media governance, the
> instance,
> > whose structures of authority can take various forms, from mini-chiefdoms
> > to more deliberative collectives. What do we know about how different
> > Mastodon instances handle governance and the exercise of their ‘instance-
> > power’? Conversely, which tactics have malicious users developed to
> > circumvent moderation or blocking? If platform politics emerges through
> the
> > unique affordance of a platform, what might we expect from the federated
> > architecture of Mastodon?
> >
> >
> > Finally, Mastodon’s architecture presents new challenges and
> opportunities
> > for digital research. What kinds of research do the existing tools (such
> as
> > the R package “rtoot”) enable and what other tools and software might we
> > want to develop? Could Mastodon be used to explore more conscientious
> ways of
> > doing API-style research?
> >
> >
> > This event seeks to take the pulse of current Mastodon research. It
> > will involve
> > a one-day symposium featuring research presentations and a plenary
> address
> > by alternative social media researcher, Robert Gehl. This will be
> followed
> > by a one-day tool exploration workshop featuring RToot developers David
> > Schoch and Chung-hong Chan. The symposium will be a hybrid event based at
> > the University of Warwick. The tool exploration will be in-person only.
> If
> > you would like to participate in this event, please submit an application
> > via the following website by midnight (anywhere) on the 14th of April:
> > https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cdi/news-events/mastodon_research/.
> >
> > You will be asked for the following:
> >
> >    - a 300-word presentation abstract
> >    - either a URL link to your research profile or a 150-word biography
> >    - an indication of attendance mode (in-person or online)
> >    - an indication of whether you wish to participate in the tool
> workshop
> >    (in-person only)
> >
> > Possible topics might include:
> >
> >    - Mastodon governance
> >    - Mastodon feature analysis or interface criticism
> >    - Cultural studies of Mastodon
> >    - Black Mastodon
> >    - Mastodon sociality and/or community dynamics
> >    - Platform migration
> >    - Mastodon and Twitter relations
> >    - Mastodon apps
> >    - Instance politics
> >    - Cross instance research
> >    - Methods and tools for studying Mastodon
> >    - Novel use cases of Mastodon instances
> >
> > If you have any questions, please get in touch with
> n[dot]tkacz[at]warwick[
> > dot]ac[dot]uk.
> >
> >
> > Thanks for your consideration,
> >
> >
> > Nate Tkacz, Carlos Cámara-Menoyo and Fangzhou Zhang
> > _______________________________________________
> > The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> >
> > Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> > http://www.aoir.org/
>
> --
> Petter Ericson, pettter at cs.umu.se
> Postdoc in the Responsible AI group, Department of Computing Science,
> University of Umeå
>