CommunityData:Fediverse research

As part of an ongoing research project led by Carl Colglazier and supervised by Aaron Shaw, members of our research group are currently gathering data from the Fediverse, a collection of decentralized social networks (DSNs).

Project Goals

The purpose of this project is to advance academic research on communication and interactions in DSNs. Our work is non-commercial and aims to collect only public records in compliance with community/system norms.

Some examples of research questions we are working on include:

• What are the effects of de-federation events on activity and toxicity?
• How do people on the Fediverse use data portability affordances?

Data collection

We operate a script from a server hosted by Northwestern University (at kibo.soc.northwestern.edu) which collects data from Fediverse server public timelines including public statuses, server metadata, and federation peers. The script does not collect any direct messages, followers only messages, IP addresses, or unlisted messages. Posts from individual accounts or servers that do not provide public timelines may be coincidentally gathered if their content was included in the public timelines of other servers. In an effort to be transparent, the script registers as an application with every server that it connects to and the application website contains contact information to facilitate followup.

In all of our studies, we do not intend to publish or release identifiable data in any form.

Funding and Disclaimer

This work is being conducted as part of a broader set of investigations into the ecology of online communities. It is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers IIS-1910202 and IIS-1908850.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Contact

Do you have further questions about this project? Concerns about how the work is being conducted or technical considerations you would like to discuss? Please contact Aaron Shaw and/or Carl Colglazier. Carl can also be found via his Fediverse account. We'll do our very best to reply within 24 hours.