Rethinking the “social” in “social media”: Insights into topology, abstraction, and scale on the Mastodon social network

Online interactions are often understood through the corporate social media (CSM) model where social interactions are determined through layers of abstraction and centralization that eliminate users from decision-making processes. This study demonstrates how alternative social media (ASM)—namely Mastodon—restructure the relationship between the technical structure of social media and the social interactions that follow, offering a particular...