Convener: Hannah Niemeier

Participants who chose to record their names here:

• Mark Corbett Wilson (@mcorbettwilson on Mastodon, X, LinkedIn)
• Gilles Dutilh (@depemig@scicomm.xyz)
• Andy Piper (@andypiper@macaw.social)
• Dr Implausible (@drimplausible@mastodon.online)
• Babette Knauer (@Bibliothecaris@social.edu.nl)
• Melanie Bartos (@melaniebartos@chaos.social)
• Cassandra Vert (@cassandravert@indieweb.social)
• Aaron Gray (@AaronNGray@fosstodon.org)

Notes

• Hannah’s team are now using Mastodon for academic purposes.
• What are the benefits of using decentralised social media for academic discourse?
  • Owning your own platform and channels.
• Finding where people have scattered to is difficult after X.
• “Shifting your research from X to Mastodon? Here’s what you need to know.” Open access article. https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(23)00323-9?

List of academics (and universities) on Mastodon: https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon?tab=readme-ov-file#official-university-accounts

• What are the legal parameters around having and hosting U’s own server and content?
• What are the complications of having faculty have their own domain and contact info vs Uni contact?
• Uni trend has been to outsourcing–but of course outside hosting is available.
• Do unis know enough about outside hosts? Do outside hosts know Uni needs?
• Fed universe can allow rebuilding the Uni publishing environment.
• How can we motivate faculty to join Uni social media?
• Own domain is a permanent home to link to wherever you go–kind of what LinkedIn has tried to be but more, able to work through current network and without the commericalism of LinkedIn. Consistent email, profile.
• Uni cares about social currency of its faculty.
• How can we offer Fedi project tools to faculty?
• Institutional servers will get the attn of people who never bothered with social media before.

Suggestion that this may be easier in Europe / there is more momentum there.

• To cover some kind of broader context why it makes sense to rely on Open Platforms we changed our whole communication strategy and explained it in a position paper: https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/public-relations/kommunikation/open-science-communication/

Find inflection points at a lower level:

• Be visible in your classrooms / lectures / conference presentations as a Fediverse denizen or participant.
• Make presentations at conferences about your experience on the Fediverse.
• Engage with Academic Associations and Journals about moving their presence over to the Fediverse in some capacity.
• Live-Toot conference presentations that you participate with.

Follow-up to a comment by Ulrike, where they was not as many people involved with Academic Twitter as was perceived.

• If the content on twitter had a large amount of lurkers, and fewer high-volume posters (whether individual or institutional):
• Then ensuring some of that kind of content makes it way to Mastodon (for example) then there is value for being present for an academic audience.