2.1. Digital participation and engagement
In general, social media engagement is the measurement of people’s reactions in the digital world (e.g. comments, likes and shares) that also help assess social media success. Digital participation and engagement have become essential elements of every entity (public or private) that is active on social platforms and seeks to form relationships with new and potential future customers or to create a public interest for its product.
Digital participation offers benefits and opportunities simplifying the methods and promoting familiarisation with the potential audience that we want to engage within our cultural activities. Examples of digital tools could be a museum’s account on social media, a library’s digital platform or account on social networks etc.
The questions of “what to offer” and “how to present it” are universal for all kinds of users. The same applies for GLAMs.
According to McLachlan (2020), some of the techniques that measure engagement are the following:
- Shares or retweets
- Likes
- Followers and audience growth
- Mentions (either tagged or untagged)
- Using branded hashtags
Cultural institutions encourage their visitors to post comments and pictures on social media as proof of cultural engagement or to collect memories of the visit. Taking and posting images on social networks is already a trend in the GLAMs sector social media activities. Accordingly, many museums’ actions are articulated around the sharing of an image or a post. Similarly, many cultural institutions begin to use hashtags in their social accounts, posts and stories. A multitude of them now request from their followers to make a post with a hashtag on Twitter and Instagram (we will examine them in detail below)! These initiatives can act as hubs for people of various cultural backgrounds to come together and learn from each other’s experiences with a particular exhibition or museum.
Another example of cultural activities are those that imply the creation of objects by the audience. These initiatives aim at spreading knowledge on the issue and consequently, strengthening public engagement. Similarly, the theory of Constructionism, known as “learning- by- making”, proposed by Harel and Papert in 1991 deals with the idea of generating understanding and knowledge by producing things to be shared with others. Therefore, combining the “learning- by- making” theory with the use of social media, can increase the value of engagement built between our institution and our audiences.
According to Flowers (2018), digital engagement is more than your online presence, more than your social media and more than your memes. He gives another notion to this practice and perceives it not just as a lifeless tool. Digital engagement is a process, and as such it necessitates time and commitment by both parties interacting with each other. Undoubtedly, social media has already become part of this interactive relationship.
Finally, the use of social media platforms is already universal and statistics now inform us about how young people from different socio-demographic backgrounds engage differently with digital media. The use of social media by GLAMs offers all young people the opportunity to access meaningful art and cultural life which will consequently impact learning, creativity, and the fostering of civic engagement in cultural organisations.