Page 101 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014Another example is the Lyric Opera of Kansas, where the organisers are the first to tweet the audience, in real time, on details of the production or what is happening behind the curtains.In Chile, the Centro Gabriela Mistral premiered an opera specially for tweeters. In an initiative unique in that country, tweeters used the hashtag #operatuitera to comment on the details of this original and entertaining story.The same has been the case in theatres. In the US there are places where there are reserved seats in theatres for those who wish to tweet during the performance; they are known as “Twitter‐friendly seats”.Also, cultural institutions such as the Casa Encendida programme activities with the aim of obtaining exposure through social networks. Through its twelve‐hour free concert marathon (La Radio Encendida) five official tweeters were sought who would experience it all and tell of their experience through Twitter. To propose themselves as official tweeters they had to post comments on the website. The five selected could attend accompanied by one other person.All these examples show that something is moving in cultural institutions around the world: the recognition of what the social networks can contribute to greater knowledge and dissemination of culture.An analysis of how Spanish museums were doing things, in terms of prolonging the experience through social networks, appeared in the report Museums in the digital age4. The main conclusions were that museums were getting better and better with the “before your visit” stage, the discovery stage, with the promotion of networks for their new cultural offerings, creation of applications, etc., but there had been little activity, few initiatives, to enrich the “now” (visit stage) and there was little to promote the exchange of experiences afterwards.AC/EThis prolongation of the experience through videos, summaries, competitions, etc., is what discothèques do extraordinarily well, according to the report cited earlier, which also gives clues as to what initiatives could also be taken in other sectors such as culture in order to augment their impact.SOCIAL NETWORKS AS CREATORS OF CULTURAL COMMUNITIESAny cultural institution with a large number of followers and a high percentage of interactions with them has created, without doubt, an influential cultural community. However, if a large number of followers come together, but with little interaction, what we have is a community, but one that lacks commitment and proximity, an unengaged community. This situation usually occurs when an institution is attractive but its communication is very corporative in tone and the content does not encourage engagement.In the report on Spanish museums cited in the previous section on Museums in the digital age, drawn up in 2011 by Dosdoce, one of the main deficiencies was the paucity of relationships between the museums and their followers on the social networks. In some cases there was no response to the comments or questions by the long‐ suffering fans of these institutions, rather similar to the situation of companies in the Ibex35. Neither was there much networking between museums, preventing them from creating knowledge nodes and shared cultural networks.Another analysis of this sort was carried out on Spanish museums in 2013 and one on art galleries in 2011. In both cases, with few exceptions, we are still at a very early stage, in comparison with other international institutions.The museum with the largest number of followers on Facebook and Twitter was the Museo del Prado in Madrid, with 278,964 and 190,872 respectively.WHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 8: ARE THE SOCIAL NETWORKS ANY USE TO THE CULTURE INDUSTRY? CURRENT PAGE...101