Cultural Heritage in Facebook - Pages and Private Impressions

Tiivistelmä suomeksi / Summary in Finnish: Englanninkielisen sosiaalisen median tuotantoa käsittelevän opiskelijan kokooman sivun tarkoitus on esitellä esimerkkien avulla sitä, miten yksittäiset ihmiset käsittelevät ja esittelevät kulttuuriperintöä Facebook-sivuillaan.

I focused on the social network Facebook for two reasons. First because its the biggest and most popular one and not limited to a certain age level and the users are very widespread concerning their background and interests. The second reason was that I'm using this network for quite some time and got used to the Facebook culture: the language and the posting and sharing system.

Content is better shared and recognized on social media when it's not only text based and most time it's image based. There are two big ways of being part and share content on Facebook through private accounts or through pages, this can be administered by private users or also by professionals. When it comes to cultural heritage content images and especially photos could be a good point for starting research. When you are using the facebook function "search" as a searching engine to check out the cultural heritage content within the social media you find several pages:

Cultural Heritage Ireland - www.culturalheritageireland.ie

[1] 3.651 Likes · 574 are talking about it

Even on the first look you know what are Ireland specialties: Literature and beautiful landscape with old medieval castles and buildings within. On the wall there are new posts every two days or so and often this are re-posts of photos. The photos got taken by different people and the got linked in the description of the image. Beside this there are also posts (with images - archive material or other graphics) that documents part of the Irish history.

Global Cultural Heritage

[2] 3.853 Likes · 260 are talking about it

The latest posts on the wall seem quite fixed to the theme music especially classic music. There is always a picture on every post. A CD cover or something else and you can often find a link to a video platform like Youtube somewhere where people can enjoy the music. The way of addressing to other users is a bit strange in my eyes. The look of the pages seems to be quite serious but there are also posts with a really private touch "For my friends" including an obligatory <3 heart. This photos are always quite charming and beautiful in my eyes but they does not really fit to the rest of the wallsapperance. This leads to the question how private can or should be a professional appearance in a social network be to catch peoples attention but still remain reliability.

Kulturgut

[3] 3.472 Likes 40 are talking about it

This is no page like the others but its an "Interest" you can choose. All the information about this "Interest" is from Wikipedia. Although the link includes the German term for that phenomena the name on the site itself is "Cultural heritage" and information are in English. There are also links to common sites on Facebook like the UNESCO or "Cultural property" or "Biodiversity".

Cultural Heritage without Borders

[4] 1.079 Likes · 24 are talking about it · 2 have been here

This page is administered by an institution in Stockholm. I think its a bit weird that you can claim that you have been there when the site is called "Heritage without Borders" which leads to no specific place in the first way. They post information about projects and announcements worldwide for people who are professionals in this sector or want to become one.

Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation

[5] 1.490 Likes · 48 are talking about it · 678 have been here

This Foundation is based in Vicksburg Mississippi. On their wall most photos are from events, workshops they organized. I think its interesting that only so few people talk about it but the number of people who haven been there is extremely high. That might have to do with the "linking system" when they got linked on a photo.

Cultural Heritage Imaging

[6] 408 Likes · 25 talking about it

Although this page has the name "Image" included in its name it doesn't look as "illustrated" as the other pages. There are only a few likes on the single posts on their wall and hardly any comments - well comments seem to be rare on any page, cause "liking" saves time and the author of the post gets the desired information that the people like the posted/shared content.

Impressions

There are many other pages about cultural heritage. I think that those who doesn't use the term seem to be more popular but it could also depend on the theme of the page. Often the themes are related to a specific nation,region,city, maybe to show what are the inhabitants proud of or they are about wider themes, phenomena that occur worldwide. The posts including photos get more attention and become far more popular than the ones without an image. The use of private users about posting and sharing cultural heritage content might be similar although its more difficult to rate it because you only have limited access to the information cause of the setting of every ones privacy settings. I think that images get shared more easily than "normal" posts. Private users can contribute/share their photos to the different pages but they are not automatically visible. The only get really visible on the wall when the page shares this photo too. Often they re-upload the photos and add the photographers name in the description but If the photo got shared several times the information about the author might get lost.

Back to Production of Social Media