Welcome to a K3 seminar with Roel Roscam Abbing. Please not that the seminar has been moved and will now take place on Monday, October 11 at 15.00-17.00.
The title of the seminar is Learning from and designing with federated social networks.
This is Roel’s 25 percent PhD seminar and the discussant is Robert Gehl, the F. Jay Taylor Endowed Research Chair of Communication at Louisiana Tech University. It is a joint seminar between K3 and the Data Society Research Programme.
This will be an online seminar. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/67993683034?pwd=azFKV0g0Zm4xdDRKSEJIN0JkaGREZz09
Below you will find an abstract for the seminar. If you would like a copy of Roel’s manuscript, please mail him at roel.roscam-abbing@mau.se
Abstract
The submitted work presents 25% progress towards a PhD in Interaction Design. The project is an inquiry in to novel architectures for on-line collectivity. In particular, it investigates what lessons can be drawn from federated social networks when it comes to creating alternative platform ecosystems. It does so from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining insights from software studies, media theory and design.
In particular, the work is based on in-depth accounts and engagements with the ‘fediverse’, a network of federated, alternative social media platforms and the communities that sustain them. Although small compared to mainstream platforms, the alternative social media that make up the ‘fediverse’ represent a compelling case where contemporary debates about user agency, content moderation and power distribution in corporate social media can be compared and contrasted to.
Through so-called activations, which are practical engagements of building alternative platforms in collaboration with stakeholders, the research explores how federated social platforms can be used as a design material to build community-owned platforms around. In doing so, it tries to understand the affordances of on-line federation for platform design but also explores how this intersects with the needs of users and institutions.