Did Journalists Actually Move to Mastodon Following Elon Musk’s Enxittification of Twitter?

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Margaret Ng, whose interest is in the transition of journalists to other platforms following the enshittification of Twitter by Elon Musk. Twitter had been crucial to journalism for years, but after his takeover Musk began to suspend the accounts of various journalists who had offended his fragile ego; many journalists responded by sharing their Mastodon or other contact details, and saying they would leave Twitter – but did this actually happen, and how are journalists now using other social media platforms?

This project examined the activities of some 861 journalists on both Twitter and Mastodon for six months before and after the Musk takeover, and conducted 11 interviews with such journalists as well. This found that journalistic use of Mastodon increased sharply after Musk’s takeover, and declined substantially on Twitter during the months immediately after; however, on Twitter activity increased again to almost pre-Musk levels within six months (and only 6% of journalists genuinely deleted their Twitter accounts), and on Mastodon their activity gradually plateaued to levels well below Twitter.

In some sense this is a genuine shift in activity, but far from a complete exodus from Twitter to Mastodon. More active Twitter users were more likely to reduce their Twitter activity. This was driven by various factors: push factors like Musk’s animosity towards journalists, or his change of blue-tick policies, as well as pull factors like the attractiveness of alternative platforms; switching costs like social factors as well as job culture and commitment, and superior platform features on Twitter (direct messaging, better search) also contributed to keeping journalists there.

Journalists posting on Mastodon also tended to use different wording on that platform; straightforward cross-posting was uncommon. Overall, then, journalists did not abandon Twitter, contrary to their initial rhetoric; for the most part they could not overcome those switching costs and simply added Mastodon to their platform repertoire.