The Failed Migration of Academic Twitter

Following changes in Twitter's ownership and subsequent changes to content moderation policies, many in academia looked to move their discourse elsewhere and migration to Mastodon was pursued by some. Our study looks at the dynamics of this migration. Utilizing publicly available user account data, we track the posting activity of academics on Mastodon over a one year period. We also gathered follower-followee relationships to map internal networks, finding that the subset of academics who engaged in migration were well-connected. However, this strong internal connectivity was insufficient to prevent users from returning to Twitter/X. Our analyses reveal significant challenges sustaining user engagement on Mastodon due to its decentralized structure as well as competition from other platforms such as Bluesky and Threads. The movement lost momentum after an initial surge of enthusiasm where the main network was fully established as most users did not maintain their activity levels, and those who did faced lower levels of engagement. Our findings highlight the challenges involved in transitioning professional communities to decentralized platforms, emphasizing the need for focus on community building for long-term user engagement.