Non-profit, ad-free social media for social scientists. Join thousands of social scientists here and across the fediverse.

sciences.social is an online community for social scientists. Users here can connect with one another and the millions of other Mastodon users who have opted for social media that is ad-free and actively moderated to keep bad actors at bay. Here's how to get started.

1. Create an account

Create an account to get started. You'll be asked to agree to some ground rules. You can post about almost anything on sciences.social, but we don't allow sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, casteism or abusive behavior.

Once you confirm your email you'll be online. Come on back to this page (sciences.social/about) for next steps.

2. Get an app

Ice Cubes for iOS and Tusky for Android are very good and free. Mona and ivory are excellent apps for iOS/Mac users with a few dollars to spare.

Mastodon also works well from a web browser on laptops and desktops. A browser extension like Graze (chrome, mozilla) or FediAct (chrome, mozilla) will make following folks from other Mastodon servers seamless. Highly recommended.

3. Follow lots of folks

Thousands of social scientists are active on Mastodon, 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. Followgraph finds folks who are popular among the people you already follow.

You can also follow hashtags like #ASA2023 to see what people are posting about the conference. Or follow #rstats for hints on R and #AcademicChatter for - you know. Or maybe just #NaturePhotography for some pleasant views.

4. Start Posting and Boosting

Introduce yourself with your first post, and include an #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.

More about us

sciences.social welcomes all social scientists, including professors, grad students and anyone with a graduate degree in the social sciences (sociology, anthropology, political science, communications, economics...), including people who are doing qualitative and quantitative work inside or outside academia. We want this to be a comfortable place for social scientists from all backgrounds, including those who are from marginalized or racialized groups, sexual minorities, people with disabilities and others who may not feel welcomed in some academic spaces.

sciences.social is collectively funded. It was started by Mark Igra (@markigra), a PhD student who earned enough money to start the site in a previous career. While Mark will continue to ensure sciences.social is funded, donations have helped pay for the rapid growth of the site. We encourage you to donate through Ko-fi

Mark runs this site with the help of a crew of moderators (Pratik, Kristian, and Simon. Let us know if you would like to help out.

Policies

At the moment, the official rules are deliberately minimal, but they have important implications. First, if you don't understand that "treat people with respect" means no sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or casteism and precludes abusive behavior and doxxing, then you don't belong on this site. Second, you must use your real name in your profile and we strongly encourage using your full name as your display name. While there are plenty of good reasons for anonymity on the internet, for our purposes being able to link online reputation to real-world reputation is important.

Post Visibility

Public posts appear on the local timelines and federated timelines of sciences.social and all other mastodon instances that host your followers. Consider using Unlisted for posts you want your followers to see, but would prefer not to appear in public timelines. Using Unlisted for replies is strongly encouraged.

Posts expressing racism, homophobia and the like are not allowed with or without a content warning or with any level of visibility.

Sensitive Media

You must mark media as sensitive if it contains violence or sexual content. We also request that you mark media as sensitive if it might trigger common phobias including arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes).

Getting along

Folks come here from different academic, ethnic and national cultures, so there are likely to be some mismatches in tone when we talk to one another. People might be more blunt than you are used to, or you might think someone is frustratingly obtuse when they are just trying to be polite. It's best to presume that folks here are acting in good faith. Mastodon has good tools for filtering or blocking posts you don't want to see. However, if you think someone is deliberately violating the rules or negatively affecting the community as a whole, you can report them as described below.

Reporting bad behavior

One of the great strengths of Mastodon is the ability to restrict access to bad actors. sciences.social already blocks posts from dozens of sites known to host trolls and nazis, but there'll be other bad behavior. If you use the "Report" action on someone's post the moderators can review it and take action to restrict that account. Reporting helps even for people who make their home on other servers.

Content Warnings

Content warnings are an important part of both the technical infrastructure and the culture of the Mastodon online community. They aren't just used for "triggering" content but also are often treated as a “headline” that allows people to choose whether they want to read the whole post. Click the CW link on your post to set one.

We strongly encourage the use of content warnings for posts that you think might be triggering or of limited interest, for example mentions of death or violence, and political debates centered on one country or locality.

While expressions of racism, casteism, homophobia, and transphobia are off-limits, we do not require content warnings for posts about those topics and their effects on people, whether academic or otherwise. Use your own judgment about using content warnings on these topics.

Site Visualization

The header image is a public domain visualization from W.E.B. Du Bois exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exhibition.

1. Use your real name and be yourself. Your real world reputation is valuable here and your reputation here is valuable in the real world.
2. Treat people with respect.
3. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, casteism or abusive behavior
4. Sexually explicit or violent media must be marked as sensitive when posting.
5. No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.

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