By Genni Perlangeli, Andrea Rea & Fabiola Sfodera
/ANGLES
The platformization of cultural industries
The platformization of cultural industries through digital transformation has played a crucial role in recent years. Forms have been acquired in producing and circulating various cultural contents (Platform Studies and Digital Cultural Industries Paolo Magaudda, Marco Solaro Sociologica. V.14N.,2020).
In the reconfiguration of cultural industry sectors, and as a consequence of the emergence of more interactive tools available to produce and share cultural content, digital media industries adopted the term “platform” as part of a broader rhetorical strategy to publicly present themselves as neutral aggregators that connect content producers and consumers.
To start with, it is worth noting that in the last couple of years, a relevant turn in the debate on platforms in the social sciences has been provoked by the publication of the book ThePlatform Society. “Public Values in a Connective World” by van Dijck, Poell, and de Waal (2018), in which the authors intersected issues typical of the political economy of communication with a Science and Technology Studies framework.
The study of digital platforms has shown that it is closely intertwined with the evolution of certain cultural industry sectors.
In recent years, online platforms have quickly become a focus of discussion in different fields of social sciences, policy, and human, in which technical factors were used as key factors to redefine and configure a wide range of activities and relationships. Platforms organize society and organize fundraisers today.
The rise of multilateral digital platforms as vehicles for value creation, value appropriation, and innovation is commonly known as platformization.
The evolution of the global digital platform economy( 1971–2021, Zoltan J. Acs, Abraham K. Song, László Szerb, David B. Audretsch & Éva Komlósi, Small Business Economics volume 57, pages 1629–1659 , 2021).
Can define a platform as an Online environment where social and economic interactions occur, often mediated by apps or apps. The digital nature of these platforms allows them to reach a wide range of users, creating new business opportunities and stimulating innovation.
A further difference from traditional models refers to the fact that in the activities the demand side plays a central role in the business of the company, for which users, or potential customers, are considered fundamental to generate value and quality matches. Digital technology is closely integrated into the value proposition and the existence of platforms of business.
The comparison between these models stands out as a substantial difference in platform-based ecosystems. While traditional entrepreneurial ecosystems are often limited to a certain region or geographical area, ecosystems based on platforms are immediately global in their scope. This difference can be attributed to the role of digital technology and the very nature of platforms, for that platform-based ecosystem can engage millions of users across the world (Sussan & Acs, 2017).
Digital platforms act as intermediaries or matchmakers, facilitating interaction between users and agents within the ecosystem.
With the advancement of digital technologies and increasing social integration, one can adopt an open, inclusive, global, dynamic, and flexible vision of the digital infrastructure through a total compression of the effects of digitization.
The relationship between platforms and cultural production has been produced and distributed online since the emergence of the so-called “Web 2.0.” The origins were rooted in the analysis of the evolution of the gaming sector.
A further step in developing the social study of platforms emerged again in another cultural industry sector — more specifically the realm of video sharing.
Gillespie (2010) triggered a wide analysis of platforms by outlining their ideological dimensions within a media industry world undergoing rapid changes. Gillespie also outlined how technology companies like Google and Microsoft were among the first to use the term “platform” to identify their media services. In this broad framework, an emerging notion that addresses the whole set of transformations produced by platforms that are affecting cultural industries is that of platformization, adopted by Helmond (2015) and then Nieborg and Poell (2018) to define the “penetration of infrastructures, economic processes, and platform rules in various sectors of the economy and daily life” (Nieborg & Poell, 2018, p. 4275).
Digital cultural studies
The initial studies of digital cultural industries’ transformation were instrumental in the development of new relevant issues and studies of platforms.
The museum is a gathering place of traditional culture and big data.
The development of information technology and Internet technology, the digitization of traditional carrier resources, and museum business processes have further expanded and extended the functions of museum social education and cultural services. Brand building and marketing of museums will help museums improve their popularity and increase their appeal to the public.
Museums have long been considered the space for people to symbolize their social status and class (Bourdieu 1973, 1996). Cultural information has become accessible to more people. By promoting interconnectedness and understanding (Sawyer and Chen 2012), the platform creates virtual spaces that are pleasant, supportive, and amicable to the visitors.
The museum has become a powerful cultural source on the ecosystem platform, strengthened by an ever-growing number of visitors and its legitimacy as a symbolic space that defies time. The world of closed museums has become open. Democratization has led to the disappearance of social boundaries and barriers. The perceptions conveyed through such platforms may influence how consumers react to content about museums presented on the platform. New technology is transforming art museums from wall-protected, “socially distinctive” (Bourdieu 1973) institutions to accessible online communities.
Today, art museums are defined as responsive (Lang and Reeve 2006), reinvented (Anderson 2004), constructed (Hein 1998), engaging (Black 2005), and participatory (Simon 2010). The most successful art museums offer a large range of experiences to their visitors. Museum visitors now seek experiences that combine learning, participation, and recreation. They are capable of experiencing not only thrill, excitement, and relaxation but also aesthetic pleasures and making valuable cerebral discoveries in a single day (Kotler, Kotler, and Kotler 2008). The successful museum must be connected to the community (Skramstad 1996). Digital media have been used by art museums for many years. During and after the COVID pandemic, their uses have significantly increased.
The analysis of cultural industries and cultural production was instrumental in the late 2000s, both in identifying platforms as an autonomous research theme and in introducing new perspectives, including analysis of the technological characteristics of the platforms.
The growing diffusion of new digital media is one of the phenomena of technological innovation that have most influenced contemporary science and everyday life. Some concepts and theories have been rethought.
New digital media have the characteristic of stimulating interactivity and generating feedback from those who use them. Especially in the nineties, a vision was proposed in which industry-based society was destined to give way to a post-industrial society in which: the primary role would be played by digital.
To stand out, Museums must put good brand construction and appropriate marketing communication in an important position, especially on platforms. This is of great significance to enhance the brand image of the museum and promote the development of the museum. The development of new media has further expanded the extension of the media environment and diversified the ways of brand building. The experience and communication through the platform between the public and the museum is in continuous development. Cultural and creative products are a deepening of the cultural value of museums. Through the new media, the unique image of the museum strengthens the brand relationship between the public and the museum.
Cultural resources and cultural connotations shape the influential museum brand and develop a new museum model. Museums in the new media environment create a new image of the museum. The museum is a meeting place of traditional culture and with the development of Internet technology and continuous digitization has further expanded and extended the functions of the museum. The museum brand is a museum image ( Bolylan, 2015). Museum brand building is an important means of museum marketing(Xue, 2023).
As museums expand globally across a range of platforms, they are transforming.
The Internet is a global network that acts as a terminal, collecting information from all users and sending it from point to point to each unit.
The museum is the carrier of history heritage and culture dissemination. As an objective cultural site, it plays a very important role in the protection, management, and study of cultural heritage through its unique functions. Studies on the communication of media culture from the point of view of cultural production build a conceptual model suitable for cultural places such as museums.
Social groups about their interests choose through digital the aspect of cultural communication that interests them.
The importance of digitalization is one of the objectives of the Next Generation EU and is part of the using appropriate funding lines and recommendations and, specifically, culture, with investments on the Europeana platform, the multilingual digital library of cultural heritage launched in 2008/2009 and currently containing over 50 million digital objects.
Under the Digital Europe program, the European Union has launched the European data initiative space for cultural heritage to support the digital transformation of the European cultural sector that has among its objectives is to allow easy access to cultural content and create new digital opportunities for the public.
The digital transformation within the museum sector has led to considerably expanded access to public domain heritage collections. One of the objectives of digitization is to make the cultural heritage accessible, both through the processes of creation and transformation of digital objects, both through the modes and tools of sharing.
Define digital accessibility as the “capacity of a website, a mobile application or a Digital document to be easily accessible, usable and understandable by people, including those with visual, auditory, motor or cognitive disabilities” (Marras 2019). Merete Sanderhoff in the guide of the Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK) in Copenhagen, defines digitization as a tool to remove barriers: to make fully accessible collections, however, the use of open-use licenses and the adoption of community participation policies and strategies because “with digital open access, people don’t have to as to the museum. The museum can come to people, on their terms, in an environment where they feel safe and at ease.”
The digital approach is important also because it is sustainable and among the possible good practices.
Energy consumption can be determined either by the choice of a given technology or by the storage methods and data exchange. The definition of “digital sobriety” refers to an approach that aims to reduce the environmental impact of digital technology. The French expression “la sobriété numérique” was coined by Frédéric Bordage and first proposed as part of the GreenIT.fr group. He defines it as “an approach that consists in designing leaner digital services and curbing everyday digital use.”
- optimizing digital tools to limit their impact and consumption;
- Develop inclusive and sustainable service offerings for everyone;
- Introducing ethical and responsible digital practices;
- making digital technology measurable, transparent, and easy to read;
- Promoting new behavior and values
Prospects for the future?
How best to communicate existing cultural realities through platforms?
In the West, the Internet was seen as an opportunity “to export democracy” (speech of Newsmuseum of Sintra, Portugal, Clinton H.,2011). The Internet and social media have been used as tools to spread and organize. Three approaches can be identified that are based respectively on the concepts of:
- Network society
- Connective society
- Platform society
Castells proposed the concept of network society to describe not only technological innovations but also the way society has organized itself in recent decades. This interweaving has produced a new dominant social structure, which lives in the network.
The museum systems themselves accredit and self-assess the museums through an online platform set up by the Directorate General Museums. The platform is designed as a useful tool for all those directly involved in the System as well as for the public. On the one hand, it improves governance processes, simplifying procedures and fostering relations with museums on the net. On the other hand, the platform aims to provide the public with up-to-date information on cultural heritage.
Among all the sectors involved in the impact of digitalization, art, and culture have become one of the most representative cases because of their complex path of evolution and adaptation to digital reality. The essential aspect, that should be stressed, is that of communication and dissemination of art and culture, areas in which new technologies and digitalization play a crucial role now more than ever.
We are seeing more and more how the digital revolution has transported art and culture outside museums and galleries, beyond the pages of books, making them just a click away to reach a wider and heterogeneous audience.
Museums and cultural institutions have implemented a rethink of their communication strategies and activities related to uses and tools where multimedia and interactivity have now become indispensable elements for cultural promotion.
Among the most social museums in the world, MoMA is the master, with just over 5 million followers on Instagram. Following are the Louvre (just under 5 million), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (4.1 million), the Tate Modern (4.1 million), and the Guggenheim Museum (2.6 million); on the contrary, resistance has emerged for the smaller and local museums that tend to be little known and do not have large flows of visitors, and that still show little responsiveness to the digital trend. Uffizi Galleries, whose Instagram account, to date, is followed by just over 700 thousand people.
The Uffizi Galleries have prepared for the entire period of closure a vast catalog of initiatives and appointments with art: through the official website of the museum was and still is possible to access a series of tours and virtual exhibitions, streaming events, video stories, audio-paths and podcasts with which the Uffizi Galleries and their collections are told through engaging explanations and narrations. The Florentine Museum complex had opted, during the pandemic, for a massive recourse to the main social networks, depopulating in fact on Facebook platforms, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok thanks to initiatives and specific communication strategies aimed at different audiences.
- On Facebook, for example, we find live broadcasts from the museum, the publication of posts and video content in depth and the presentation of new initiatives to engage the public of the web. Among the many initiatives #uffizidamangiare, a weekly event that included the publication of a video in which, every Sunday, a well-known chef or character from the food and wine world chose a themed work (this is still life) from the Uffizi collections and, inspired by the dishes and ingredients portrayed in it, he proposed or prepared his own cooking recipe. On the Instagram channel, instead, were inserted the “micro art pills”, short videos or textual insights aimed at making some selected masterpieces better known and intrigue users, while through the stories were published short quizzes, and questions asked to the public to encourage them to interact with the museum page. The TikTok channel is aimed at the younger audience through a format of short videos with playful and informal tones.
The Museum of the Twentieth Century in Milan has intensified its activities on its social accounts, proposing online tours and presenting some of its works on its Instagram channel. They have refined their digital proposals. They proposed initiatives such as “C@mpus Homeline” summer and webinars on their site, and exceptional guides were featured in their social campaign “The custodians tell”. They also launched the KitEdu900, addressed to primary school children and “La call Museo chiama scuola”, active until the end of 2021, which wanted to deepen, albeit at a distance, the historical museum-school alliance, creating special paths dedicated to Under 10 children.
As emerges from a 2019 report entitled “Museums and Social Media. Development and Evolution of user-museum interaction” – starting from an analysis of the digital communication activities of the most active museums on social networks – it can be said that the most successful content among users is visual, with a prevalence of social video content. The popular posts stimulate more public involvement and become a means to deepen and better appreciate the museum.
The posts on the places and territorial contexts of museums work just as well. The posts that are proposed to educate on new topics, get better results in terms of involvement and appreciation.
This formula, which integrates visual and textual content, works particularly well for art, thanks also to the perfect integration between social media and digital technologies. The goal in the cultural field is to use the different social platforms to showcase quality, and emotion and create new forms of involvement and entertainment, enhancing the enjoyment of cultural heritage.
The development of a new digital strategy creates the “democratization of art”, an open and affordable art for all, generating communication between equals. Moreover, with digital technologies there is a different experience of enjoyment of cultural heritage: through digital platforms and technologies, the work appears decontextualized, immersed in a completely virtual space. A museum that wants to become accessible, through the operation of digital storytelling, has the opportunity to tell events, stories, and projects, accompanying the user during everyday life and feeding it with a wide range of content. With the story, the museum has the opportunity to create with the user a complex shared narrative, becoming a reference point for information.
Digital fruition cannot exist if we do not first work on the digitalization of heritage.
In order to be able to offer digital content to support new user experiences (from the virtual tour to the app), the availability of the digitized heritage becomes a necessary condition. The latest survey conducted by the Observatory for Digital Innovation in Cultural Heritage and Activities highlighted how the pandemic has significantly accelerated the need to digitize heritage: in fact, the number of institutions that have made the collection available online (from 40% in 2020 to 70% in 2021) and for 24% of museums the digitization of the collection is the priority activity in the next two years.
The debate on the approach to the digitization of heritage is still open, with particular reference to the possibility of re-using the digitized content and the trade-off between the costs and benefits of digitization depending on the tools used. On the one hand, the highest resolution in the digitalization of the patrimony would carry out both protection and use activities, but on the other hand costs and times may not be sustainable.
The word phygital is a combination of the words physical (“physical“) and digital (“digital”) to indicate the ever-increasing experiential crossing and fusion between these two worlds.
In other words, the term refers to the ways and means by which these two realms – physical and digital – have merged into each other, and consequently always.
Two examples of museums that have been effective in creating phygital experiences, both in northern Europe (one in the Netherlands and the other in Estonia).
The first is the Markiezenhof (literally, the Marquise’s Palace) in Bergen Op Zoom, a small town in the Brabant region of the Netherlands.
Another museum, totally different in size and theme, that uses the phygital approach is the Estonian Maritime Museum in Tallinn. Housed in a huge former Soviet factory of seaplanes, the museum is very impressive because it has been transformed into a dark space, a vast blue sea canvas where boats and submarines sail, with giant ceiling propellers that spin slowly, creating a Jules Vernes atmosphere.
The interactive is the key.
Today, the museum tends increasingly to emphasize the “inclusive character” of its action, to guarantee equal rights and equal access to the heritage by each person.
A flexible institution, the museum embodies the aim of representing modern society, which recognizes its role as an interpreter of its roots, its aspirations, and its identity.
In this sense, museums play the role of “social activators”, assuming responsibility, of an ethical and political nature, to strengthen the position of each individual, in the wider context of society, so that he can exercise the right to participate fully in the context.
The museum therefore assumes the important role of intermediary between culture, well-being, and inclusion, acting as an agent of democracy and citizenship, in a process that requires the constant analysis of the impacts, benefits, and criticalities of the initiatives taken, to contribute to the growth of strategies. For this reason, an overall communication strategy of the museum has been defined, consistent with its mission to ensure the participation of all in the cultural activities of the institute, in the fruition as well as in the production of the contents.
Is it necessary to take a visual design approach that considers environments, texts, and images?
The need to increase communication with the inclusion in the institutional web channels of a section dedicated to the accessibility and wider use of the cultural sites under consideration also appears a valid trend, could it gradually be implemented?
Biography:
Genni Perlangeli
PhD candidate in Marketing and Doctor Europaeus, CORIS Department, University of La Sapienza in Rome.
Andrea Rea
- University of Rome “Sapienza”, Professor of Digital Marketing at the Faculty of “Sciences Politics, Social and Communication”.
- Bocconi University of Milan, SDA Fellow
- Degree in Economics, University “Federico II” of Naples.
- Ph. D in Business Administration and Management, University “Cà Foscari” of Venice.