Instagram streaming sessions as a form of archaeological communication: the case of the Colombare di Negrar project

By Chiara Boracchi – What happens if a study day is cancelled because of the pandemic and your excavation team cannot share the latest results of its research through “traditional” formats? You may decide to organise a webinar. Or you may decide to carry out an experiment.

Research Recruitment Using Facebook, Instagram and Twitter Advertising: challenges and potentials

Insufficient participation in online surveys is an issue that this proposed recruitment strategy aims to address. Online methods of recruitment, and especially the use of social media advertisements (ads), offered a new avenue of grasping users’ attention in order to raise awareness, catch the interest and recruit potential participants in the research. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to report on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter advertising as a mechanism for recruiting research participants into a study investigating the experiences of those who do (or do not) follow museums on social media. The current work aims: (1) to demonstrate the use of social media ads as a significant recruitment method of participants in digital heritage research, (2) to present the lessons learnt from the use of targeted advertising on social media for a specific research project, and (3) to discuss the methods and approaches followed across the three platforms compared to standard advertisement measures provided by the platforms and marketing benchmarks.

Collecting memories, mapping places in the Covid era: a digital community map for Trinitapoli (Foggia, Apulia)

This paper aims to discuss the activities carried out in the frame of the public archaeology project Open Salapia after the COVID-19 pandemic hit Europe. After many years of fieldwork and activities with the public, the relationship between the archaeologists and the local community had to find new ways to keep going and respect the state of emergency limitations. We asked ourselves if a social network like Facebook could be a valuable tool for a community mapping experience engaging the citizens of Trinitapoli (Foggia, Italy). The Facebook page community was asked to take part in a participatory process for co-creation of a community map by sharing memories and audio-visual materials on the urban and rural landscape forms, uses, and traditions in the distant or recent past. The result is a digital community map that can be used both by the local community and visitors and constantly enriched in compliance with the ever-changing collective perception of cultural heritage.