Abstract

Keywords: Curatorship, Social Media, Generation Z, Media Art, Audience Participation, Engagement, Museum Studies, Arts Management, Audience Behaviour

The integration of social media into daily life is one of the most distinct demographic features of younger generations, especially among Generation Z (born between 1996 and 2015). For museums and other cultural institutions to engage with this audience group efficiently, their exhibitions have to take social media into the consideration of mediating strategies. This study aims to address the challenges and opportunities of such practice, by analysing and assessing the effectiveness of two different curatorial approaches to mediate exhibition context via audience participation on social media, namely the Collectivist and Individualist approaches. Purposefully curated in the respective curatorial approaches, two major media art exhibitions in the series One World Exposition 2 in Hong Kong (2017-18) were analysed using the Engagement Process identified by E. A. Edmonds, L. Muller and M. Connell with stages including Attractor, Sustainer and Relator. Through observation, focus group and data extracted on social media, the effort of the Collectivist curatorial strategies to intentionally manipulate audience behaviour showed generally better result in activating audience participation on social media. While recognising its limitations including the different institutions’ positions and motivation towards social media, this study raises critical implications such as the influence of social media celebrities, social media posts as audience’s interpretations and the concern of curatorial strategies overshadowing the artwork.

• Kyle Chung. School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

Full text (PDF) p. 282-290