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Governing Together: Toward Infrastructure for Community-Run Social Media

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Decentralizing the governance of social computing systems to communities promises to empower them to make independent decisions, with nuance and in context. Yet, communities do not govern in isolation. Many problems communities face are common, or move across their boundaries. We propose designing for inter-community governance: mechanisms that support relationships between communities toward coordinating on governance issues. Drawing from workshops with 24 individuals on decentralized, community-run social media, we present six challenges in designing for inter-community governance surfaced through ideas discussed in workshops. These ideas come together as an ecosystem of resources and tools that highlight three key principles for design: modularity, forkability, and polycentricity. We end with a discussion of how workshop ideas might be implemented in future work aiming to support community governance in social computing more broadly.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHI 2026 - Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
EditorsNuria Oliver, David A. Shamma, Heloisa Candello, Pablo Cesar, Pedro Lopes, Alessandro Bozzon, Thomas Kosch, Vera Liao, Xiaojuan Ma, Valentino Artizzu, Fiona Draxler, Gustavo Lopez, Anke V. Reinschluessel, Xin Tong, Phoebe O. Toups Dugas
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9798400722783
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 13 2026
Event2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2026 - Barcelona, Spain
Duration: Apr 13 2026Apr 17 2026

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2026
Country/TerritorySpain
CityBarcelona
Period4/13/264/17/26

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
  • Software

Keywords

  • community governance
  • decentralization
  • platforms
  • social media

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