Bridging Social Movements and the New Social Web (working draft) - Variable Context with @CaptainCalliope.at

FediForum | Growing the Open Social Web un-workshop, 2026/03/02

Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media

When practitioners used the term “social media” to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms and protocols that allowed people to socialize with friends and communities of interest by using digital technologies. Twenty years later, users of social media are far more likely to scroll than post – and the content that they consume is often strategically produced and algorithmically curated. In this essay, I argue that the very essence of social media has changed. To more effectively interrogate what we are witnessing, we need to stop presuming that these tools are “social media” and begin recognizing that they are now “parasocial media.” Doing so raises new questions about digitally mediated sociality, not to mention the politics and governance of these platforms.

FediForum | Growing the Open Social Web:<br>An Online Un-Workshop

Since the Twitter takeover by Elon Musk over three years ago, the Open Social Web has been adopted by an enthusiastic community. People world-wide are building and using open social platforms and open social protocols to better interact with others online.

FediForum

FediForum: moving the Open Social Web forward

Growing the Social Web

I'm going to be participating in the Growing the Open Social Web workshop at Fediforum on March 2, 2026. I'm excited to talk to other people who care about the Fediverse about ways to connect more people through ActivityPub. Fediforum invited attendees to publish position papers before the workshop. SWF has a number of hypotheses…

Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization

The social media ecosystem appears to be in flux. Twitter’s rebranding to X has come to symbolize a broader reorganization of online publics – political reshuffling, user attrition, and uncertainty over the role of legacy platforms. Simultaneously, the shift from text-based, networked feeds toward algorithmically curated, short-form video has accelerated, with TikTok setting the pace for the wider ecosystem [18, 14, 16]. At the same time, everyday communication increasingly migrates from large, open networks to semi-private spaces such as group chats and messaging apps. Commentators describe a digital public sphere in transition: smaller, more fragmented, less dominated by traditional social networking sites, and rise of more broadcast-oriented forms of media – with some even suggesting that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the social media era.

A New Social

Our mission is to liberate people's networks from their platforms, enabling The Last Network Effect and leveling the playing field across the open social web.

A New Social

Our mission is to liberate people's networks from their platforms, enabling The Last Network Effect and leveling the playing field across the open social web.

a federated autonomous zone

cozy anarchist social media for the coming days

Platform Wars (part 4): A Public Option for Social Media

Welcome to StateBook.

Building A Prosocial Media Ecosystem | NOEMA

There’s never been a better time to make social media what it always should have been: a tool to strengthen rather than strip-mine the social fabric.

Briefing_Building a New Social Web-20260218.pdf

It’s time for movements to rethink social media

Movements can still find people on social media. But the real organizing has to happen somewhere else — and that's the part we keep skipping.

It's working - Tynan's Leaflets

5 pieces of context on a single post, proving what the social web offers today