Page 149 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

are in several languages make it deserving of this privileged status.Importance has been attached to the heritage eld – especially institutions and the profession- als associated with them – in the creation of content made available on Wikipedia.An example of the foregoing is the annual event Wiki Loves Monuments,111 a competition for pho- tographs of monuments organised by Wikimedia for the purpose of increasing the multimedia content accompanying the various Wikipedia articles. This initiative encourages users to take part by uploading photos of monuments undera free license to be used in Wikipedia articles or on the Web. The ultimate aim is to create a free media repository to boost the dissemination of culture.Other initiatives involve the institutions running campaigns to encourage sector professionals and internet users to collaborate on creating Wikipe- dia content.A good example is one of the experiences of Patrimonio Abierto,112 an activity stemming from collaboration between Patrimonio UGR113 and the Free Software O ce of the University of Granada.114 An appeal was launched via the social media for people to take part in a face-to-face activity at the city’s Hospital Real. It consisted of a mini-course on editing the digital encyclopae- dia and free culture, after which the participants collaborated by broadening the multimedia content of the Wikipedia entry115 on the monu- ment with their own photos. Creating or editing other entries related to the cultural heritage of the University of Granada was also discussed.Social mediaNevertheless, the social media and applications are the most widely used tools today – so much so that few heritage institutions are not present on one or several as part of their educationand dissemination policy. It is therefore hardlysurprising that many of these institutions already have an online community manager, the name given to the professional responsible for main- taining the community of users of these social media and developing related strategies.In addition to newsletters, notices and reminders of special programmes, there are promotions through competitions, advertisements for publications or products sold in the online store, and miscellaneous audio visual content created every day to achieve the maximum number of interactions and, ultimately, reach the largest possible number of users.There are insu cient in-depth studies on the social media presence of historic-monumental and immovable heritage – whose impact on today’s society has not been properly assessed – compared to the extensive research of this kind carried out in the museum sector.The number and types of social networks and applications has grown in recent years in pace with the various types of multimedia content that are currently shared on the social media. There is furthermore a tendency to disseminate the same information on several of them in order to reach a larger audience.The social media have become an essential tool for reaching the largest possible audience and many institutions have pro les on several of them. Although the best known are Facebook116 and Twitter,117 newer ones like Instagram118 and Snapchat119 are strong rivals in terms of number of users. They have been enjoying considerable social impact lately and are also being used by heritage institutions, especially to engage with millennials.A notable case in Spain is the presence of Casa Batlló on well-known social media and applica- tions like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even Snapchat. It deserves to be stressed not only for its number of pro les, but also for the many activities and types of multimedia information itAC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 2017149The use of digital technologies in the conservation, analysis and dissemination of cultural heritage