Research project: ‘Exploring Academic Staff Engagement on Mastodon'

Social media have transformed the way individuals connect and share information within various communities, including the academic sector. 

Mastodon, a decentralised, community-driven, and open-source social media platform, has gained popularity as an alternative to mainstream platforms, especially in the light of developments on Twitter/X since Elon Musk’s take-over that have led to increased amounts of misinformation and hate speech directed at academics. 

It may be argued that Mastodon became a new haven for academic discourse. There are a number of Mastodon instances that aim specifically at serving the research community. However, the extent to which academic staff engage on Mastodon, the nature of their use, and their motivation for (not) doing so has remained largely understudied.

Departing from its commitment to open science principles and its role as a trustworthy provider of information and resources, the University of Groningen Library has used Mastodon as its primary channel for communicating and engaging with the academic community since October 2023.

In this project, we investigate how academic staff perceive and use Mastodon for professional and academic purposes. We aim to learn more about the motivations for using or not using Mastodon, usage patterns, challenges faced, and potential benefits perceived by academics. 

This study will contribute to our understanding of how decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon are shaping academic communication and collaboration.

As part of this project we will…

1. conduct a systematic literature review on academic social media use, and on the use of Mastodon and other decentralized platforms in particular.

2. assess the current level of awareness and adoption of Mastodon among the academic community on Mastodon as well as the perception of Mastodon.

3. examine the types of content, practices, and modes of interaction characteristic for academic uses of Mastodon and contrast them with their equivalents on other platforms.

4. explore perceived and actual benefits and challenges associated with using Mastodon for professional networking and information dissemination and perhaps links to other practices e.g. open science.

• Information brochure about our data collection

The project runs from 1 September to 31 December 2024.

Contact

Hannah Niemeier, student

Josca Westerhof, communications advisor

Babette Knauer, team leader Communications