Page 98 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014that direct interaction in the group or in society. Almost 70% of Internet users (64.1% in Spain) are members of social networks, but this figure rises to 94.5% for Internet users aged between 16 and 24. That means that if culture wants to attract new generations it has to take a leap into the online world, and there the rules and codes, the social architecture, are essentially those of social networks. So these rules have to be understood.The proliferation of devices such as computers, and above all smartphones and tablets, combined with the ease of sharing photos, videos and text on the social networks has turned something that used to be impossible into an everyday affair: sharing experiences in real time. Given that culture is above all the confrontation of new experiences, the facilities for sharing them provided by social networks can multiply the impact and attractiveness of cultural products and are an opportunity for cultural administrators that must not be missed.Humans are sociable beings, but also symbolic and cultural ones. The tools we call social networks have simply amplified our natural scope for socialising to a larger community and have augmented the number of social interactions by creating a greater connection density.The social networks have also abolished the information monopoly by cheapening access and augmenting the sources. Also, the information on the social networks reaches us filtered and recommended by people we trust, and this means that we attribute greater value and reliability than we do to the classic unidirectional models for the dissemination of information. Through the social networks there is the possibility of a sort of “marketing by recommendation” that is much more effective than traditional marketing. We are already receiving the first experiences of this marketing by recommendation in the tips we receive from, say, Amazon when buying a book or from Spotify when listening to music. But in these cases the “recommendation” is currently produced by algorithms and the analysis of large amounts of data and the user’s transaction history, which sometimesAC/Edoes not describe him or her adequately. However, on the social networks such a recommendation is made between human beings, person to person, between whom there is some sort of relationship, and would have much more chance of being more suitable and accepted.Social networks also make it possible to achieve something that before was not possible because of the large organisational costs it would involve. This is their capacity to mobilise people, which we have already seen in cases such as the protests of the 15‐ M movement or the Arab Spring, but which can also be seen in matters such as collective financing and microsponsorship or in the support for social causes. We are entering the era of the crowd economy, with growing importance of the collective impetus. Thus, today peer networks also have the ability to give a second opportunity to projects that the market has rejected.WHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 8: ARE THE SOCIAL NETWORKS ANY USE TO THE CULTURE INDUSTRY?If the world of culture wants to attract new generations it will have to take a leap for‐ ward into the online world where the codes are basically those of the social mediaThe socialnetworks offerculturalinstitutionsinteraction withtheir users, tocollect theircomments,understand them better and establish a lasting relationship with them, to learn from their comments to correct deficiencies, and to obtain statistics in a simple way. In the traditional marketing of other products the brands discuss the need to have not just consumers, but fans, users who adore the brand and become spontaneous recommenders of it. This phenomenon can be seen in the followers of brands such as Apple, Harley and Nike, to take just three examples. It is a process that takes time and that requires a prior communication strategy, with aims and a plan, but it is also possible and highly desirable for this to happen for culture, as we shall see in various examples in this article.But this change to a model that makes use of the social networks is not easy, above all if it is done from the standpoint of a classic or elitist model of CURRENT PAGE...98