Eventful migration: Rethinking social media migration with help from Elon Musk’s sink

29 June 2025·
Nathaniel Tkacz
Nathaniel Tkacz
Carlos Cámara-Menoyo
Carlos Cámara-Menoyo
,
Fangzhou Zang
· 0 min read
Image credit: Unsplash
Abstract
Using the 2022 Twitter to Mastodon migration as a case study, this article contributes a new understanding of social media migration (SMM). It begins with a review of existing studies of SMM, showing how migration is often understood as a combination of ‘push and pull factors’. We suggest a need to widen the conceptual scope for how we approach SMM in ways that more directly tie such movements to specific questions of power, agency and events that ripple through digital cultures. Drawing on social media account analysis, a survey of recently migrated Mastodon users, content from high-profile Twitter users and other media commentaries, we re-present the migration in order to detail our ‘eventful’ theory of migration. Eventful social media migration is comprised of five elements: an initial X factor; the emergence of a critical voice; a collective platform consciousness; an observable migration; and a wider terrain transformation.
Type
Publication
New Media & Society
publications
Alternative Social Media Mastodon X Twitter
Nathaniel Tkacz
Authors
Nathaniel Tkacz
Professor, Associate Co-Head of the Department
Nate Tkacz is a Professor of Digital Media and Culture. His broad interest is in understanding how digital technologies produce or (re)shape culture and society. He has approached this interest in a number of ways, for example, through a study of how digital networks change the conditions of knowledge production (through studies of Wikipedia or dashboard interfaces), or through studies of how apps transform our relationship to money and finance (banking apps), or governance and health (covid apps). His research aims to combine critical and technical understandings of media with creative methodological approaches.
Carlos Cámara-Menoyo
Authors
Carlos Cámara-Menoyo (he/him)
Principal Research Software Engineer

I am an interdisciplinary researcher whose research articulates around how physical and digital infrastructures, especially those that are commonly produced, respond to and are shaped by societal challenges. I’ve worked as an architect, drupal developer, project manager, lecturer, data scientist, and currently as Principal Research Software Engineer.

My research interests revolve around the social aspect of technology and methods to surface the world-views that are invariably embedded in technical artefacts such as cities, software or platforms. To do so, I use mixed methods with a preference for digital methods, participatory methods and data visualisation and a keen interest in EDI and open research best practices to make research Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable