Getting Started

There’s no marketing team or algorithm to show you content on the social web, but there are some things you can do to make your experience better.
Author

Mark Igra

Published

January 1, 2023

sciences.social is built on Mastodon, one of the biggest platforms in the “fediverse”. After you sign in you’ll have accesss to the Mastodon web interface, but for the best experience you’ll probably want to get an App for your mobile device and you’ll definitely want to find some people to follow since there are no algorithms that shape what you see.

1. Follow lots of folks

Thousands of social scientists are active in the fediverse, and you can follow anyone regardless of which server they call home. There’s no algorithm to fill your feed with content so it helps to follow liberally. Our companion site find.sciences.social makes it easy to find and follow academics from many different disciplines including Sociology, Communication and Media Studies, and Political Science. Try the Mammoth app for tools to fill out your feed and “Smart Lists of topics to follow.” Followgraph finds folks who are popular among the people you already follow.

You can also follow hashtags like #sociology to see what people are posting about the topic. Or follow #rstats for hints on R and #AcademicChatter for - you know. Or maybe just #NaturePhotography for some pleasant views.

2. Get an app

You can use the standard Mastodon app for iOS and Android with sciences.social, but sciences.social can also be accessed with these options, which many people prefer.

Web

Phanpy is a smooth, attractive, and innovative web-based UI you can use on your phone. Graze (chrome, mozilla) fixes a Mastodon frustration by allowing you to boost posts and follow users when you visit any Mastodon site. Highly recommended.

iOS

  • Ice Cubes A fast and free app. Requires iOS 17
  • Mammoth An innovative app with “Smart Lists” and recommendations about who to follow
  • Ivory A smooth, paid app from the makers of TweetDeck
  • Mona Another polished app, with lots of customization options

Android

3. Make yourself known

Introduce yourself using a post with the #introduction hashtag. Post about whatever you want, and use hashtags to make finding your posts easier. If you see a post you like, boost it. There’s no algorithm to amplify selected voices here so we rely on boosting to see what’s interesting.