Digital mediation of cultural content may start with the information on the official website and social media accounts, and continue with the existence of specific experiences, apps and tours that bring the respective content closer to the considered target groups. Thus, the museum content becomes more accessible, more interesting, more interactive for the end-users. One should also consider the existence of an entire range of digital marketing options, be them related to e-commerce, or to visitor studies and segmentation practices, or even to communication campaigns such as newsletters creation and distribution. All these are aimed to remove the pedestals the term “culture” had been assigned for centuries.
Digital mediation is, first of all, a sign of democratization. Cultural content is not only for the elites. On the contrary, it is for everybody and therefore it should be presented in a way understandable and acceptable for the different beneficiaries.
One example of digital mediation is the one that can be done with a platform such as Arenamatrix, which constantly interprets data generated by the visitors of cultural organizations in order to contribute to the unification and deduplication of the data produced by the museum or heritage site, all with the aim of turning these data into particularly valuable business tools, from e-ticketing to online shop, and virtual assistant. It is a platform that has been chosen by museums and performing arts institutions throughout Europe: MUCEM (Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée) in Marseille, Teatro di Varese, St Pauli Theater in Hamburg, IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique – Centre Pompidou) in Paris, La Maison du Sublime in Rouen, the site of Pont du Gard, Sèvres – Manufacture et Musée Nationaux, Musée de l’Armée – Hôtel national des Invalides in Paris, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, la Comédie Française, l’Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, le Château de Fontainebleau, l’Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, Schloss Benrath in Dusseldorf, etc.
As indicated on the blog section of the Arenamatrix website, the platform interprets visitors’ data according to various criteria, such as socio-demographic, for instance, age, country of origin, family status; psychological ones, for example, thematic interests, lifestyle, and also behavioral criteria, which include customer habits, loyalty towards the cultural organization, etc. Based on such segmentation, it is possible to better target the offer and reach out to a larger audience.
Other very interesting examples of obtaining visitors’ feedback are those which use digital mediation throughout the exhibition, or at its end.
In the exhibition Lomo Ludens, organized at La Caixa Forum in Madrid, visitors’ reactions were collected throughout the entire visit by using tokens. Based on the provided answers, before exiting the exhibition, the visitor could see what gamer category would he/she fit in.
Another example is the one of the exhibition Berlin Global, at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, where visitors’ reactions are also recorded via the tokens provided at the entrance. At the end of the itinerary, the visitor is provided with a summary of the answers/ reactions provided throughout the visit.
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