Dapping into the Fediverse: Analyzing What’s Trending on Mastodon Social

Abstract

Social media has changed the way we consume information daily. Most social media sites are centralized, meaning they are owned by a single entity, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. However, recently other forms of social media sites known as decentralized social networks are getting popular. These platforms are understudied. Hence in this exploratory research, one of the most prominent decentralized social platforms known as Mastodon Social has been studied. A review of what others have focused on when it comes to studying decentralized social networks has been conducted. Scripts to collect data from Mastodon Social are shared and analyses of the collected data with many valuable insights are provided.