FACULTY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY | Seminar
Final seminar for Roelof Roscam Abbing: Configuring the fediverse

Welcome to Roelof Roscam Abbing final PhD thesis seminar: Configuring the fediverse: Participatory design, online federation and alternative social media.

Discussant

Prof Irina Shklovski of Copenhagen University

Supervisors

Ann Light and Susan Kozel

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation in Interaction Design is to understand how online federation configures alternative social media. Using the ecosystem of the Fediverse as a case study, my research explores how the concept of federation has been historically used, imagined, and reimagined within the design of alternative social media. I do so by drawing on Lucy Suchman's theory of configuration—that users and their systems are mutually constituting and that technologies operate simultaneously on the level of imaginaries as well as materials. I use configuration as a way to analyze the way this ecosystem is designed and redesigned, but also extend it to describe configuring as a design practice. Thus, this dissertation discusses three instances of (re)configuring off-the-shelf alternative social media. In two of these, I follow a participatory design process to create prototypes with stakeholders.

Through the practice of configuring, I examine how online federation shapes the design and affordances of online platforms. Aside from research insights, these collaborations result in concrete technological contributions in the form of advanced working prototypes, improvements to code bases of existing alternative platform projects, and feedback for project developers. In drawing attention to how online federation is at once configured and configuring, and by better understanding its role in the circulation of data within federated platforms, the dissertation develops a nuanced understanding of federation's implications for platform design and its impacts on content moderation. In doing so, the thesis contributes to existing gaps in scholarship on how federation can be used to create new avenues for co-ownership and co-design of the online infrastructures we rely on.