Unplatformed Design: A Model for Appropriating Social Media Technologies for Coordinated Participation

Lambton-Howard, D; Olivier, P; Vlachokyriakos, V; Celina, H; Kharrufa, A

doi:10.1145/3313831.3376179

Unplatformed Design: A Model for Appropriating Social Media Technologies for Coordinated Participation

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Dan Lambton-Howard ORCiD, Professor Patrick Olivier ORCiD, Dr Vasilis Vlachokyriakos, Dr Ahmed Kharrufa ORCiD

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This is the final published version of a conference proceedings (inc. abstract) that has been published in its final definitive form by ACM, 2020.

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Abstract

Using existing social media technologies as a resource for design offers significant potential for sustainable and scalable ways of coordinating participation. We look at three exemplar projects in three distinct domains that have successfully coordinated participation through the configuration and augmentation of existing social media technologies: participatory future forecasting, participatory health research, and connectivist learning. In this paper we conceptualise social media technologies as material for design, that is, as the raw material with which coordinated participation is realized. From this we develop a model that proposes four material qualities of social media technologies, morphology, role, representation of activity and permeability, and point to how they can be productively employed in the design of coordination of participation.