Peterson-Salahuddin: Social media keeps fracturing. Now what?

Social media users are increasingly using alternative social media platforms like Mastadon, Bluesky and Neighbors by Ring to connect with their communities. 

This fracturing is making it difficult for presidential candidates to spread messages and making advertising more competitive. 

University of Michigan School of Information assistant professor Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin says these “dispersed networks” are forcing people to shift how they connect. . 

Peterson-Salahuddin is an expert on how historically marginalized communities engage and find information using technology and media.  

“You're searching for that connection through these platforms, through these wider and dispersed networks,” she says. “And if there's one clear place where they are, then you can go to that place. But if it becomes less clear where they are, then you're kind of spreading out and trying to find where those connections are again.

"As we spread out more and more, people are recalibrating, that doesn't mean that they're not still in those old places. They're just, you know, moving and shifting things around," Peterson-Salahuddin says. 

RELATED: 

Read “Connecting On Expanded Social Media Won't Be Like 2020” on Michigan Information and Research Service Inc (MIRS). 

UMSI assistant professor Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin’s research focuses on how historically marginalized communities engage with technology. Check out her UMSI faculty profile for more information.