Closing the Door to Remain Open: The Politics of Openness and the Practices of Strategic Closure in the Fediverse

IF 5.5 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2024-12-23 DOI:10.1177/20563051241308323

Jamie A. Theophilos

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

In early 2023, Meta announced that its new microblogging platform, Threads, would join the Fediverse, a network of free, open-source social media platforms. This decision created a rift within the Fediverse, with some users supporting Meta’s integration while others strongly opposing it. This research explores the practices and discourses of the latter group—users, developers, and server administrators—who aim to build a safer and more autonomous “free Fediverse.” By framing the Free Fediverse as a digital counterpublic, this article introduces the concept of “strategic closure” to illustrate how these actors resist corporate capture and maintain a safer online environment. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of sociomateriality and the politics of openness, my analysis highlights the entanglement between discursive and material aspects of these counterpublic practices. This study contributes to the broader discourse on alternative social media politics, emphasizing the ongoing negotiations between openness, safety, and technological design, and offers insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS) for understanding counterpublics in the age of Big Tech.

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关上大门保持开放：开放的政治和战略封闭的实践

2023年初，Meta宣布其新的微博平台Threads将加入Fediverse，这是一个免费、开源的社交媒体平台网络。这个决定在Fediverse内部造成了裂痕，一些用户支持Meta的整合，而另一些则强烈反对。本研究探讨了后一组用户、开发人员和服务器管理员的实践和话语，他们的目标是建立一个更安全、更自治的“自由Fediverse”。通过将Free Fediverse构建为数字反公众，本文引入了“战略关闭”的概念，以说明这些参与者如何抵制公司捕获并维护更安全的在线环境。借助社会物质性和开放性政治的理论框架，我的分析强调了这些反公共实践的话语和物质方面之间的纠缠。本研究有助于更广泛地讨论另类社交媒体政治，强调开放性、安全性和技术设计之间正在进行的谈判，并为理解大科技时代的反公众提供科学技术研究（STS）的见解。

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来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.