Page 104 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016

104a few who have been attending for several years and dress up in costumes, with recursive and emphatic hashtags such as #resudisfraz.They use Twitter both to provide information about various activities and promotions and to generate conversation. We nd a steady owof tweets from fans under preferential hashtags (for example #RF2015 or, with a view to the forthcoming edition, #RF2016). In addition,they reply almost immediately to all comments received with the same degree of familiarity and aim to attend to them all in detail.Taking a very similar approach to their audience, they use Facebook in very much the same way as they do Twitter and Instagram: to document the festival and as an album for images of the festivals. Once again, we nd that followers are very active in posting comments and reposting the organisation’s messages.Furthermore, around November, Resurrection Fest uploads to YouTube recordings of some of the previous year’s concerts, as well as launching presales for the next edition. The organisers manage to create plenty of expectation, asthey focus on the longest-awaited and most appreciated concerts and post the date and time of when they will upload the best moments from the previous year’s gigs. They also share entire concerts of past editions (the 2014 concert was uploaded around the time of the 2015 edition). In this respect they use YouTube as a channel and content manager which they furthermore embed on their website and disseminate online.According to the team of organisers, these tools provide an essential ‘two-way channel’to work with. They weave networks, build a sensation of community around the event and have been working on this for years, day by day, with the whole Spanish and international heavy metal music sector. With these digital tools itis important to persevere over time and with values.The Mérida International Classical Theatre Festival has established and developed its social media strategy over its past four editions. Although present on only four platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube), it has thousands of followers and its social media presence is causing a signi cant impact on the evolution and visibility of the festival.The organisers use Facebook and Twitter to share news and novelties related to the festival, ranging from the activities themselves and press reviews to the presentation of budgets in a transparent manner, boosting visitor con dence. They also use Facebook photo albums to show high-quality pictures of past editions; some of these are posted on Instagram together with more familiar or curious pictures (taken from more subjective angles).They use YouTube to share promotional videos, fragments and summaries of performances, and interviews with some of the artists who have taken part in the festival. Months before the festival begins, they prepare a set of videos featuring some of the main characters in the plays that are due to be performed, devoting a few minutes to some aspect of their role and encouraging people to attend. In other words, they use it to create their own content, taking advantage of the well-known and popular national and international actors who are due to perform at the festival and subsequently distributing this content on other media and social networks.The festival’s organisers stress the importance of working and cultivating relations with in uential people from the culture sector (once again, creating networks whose online and o ine boundary is becoming vaguer). In hindsight,they consider and stress that these tools are of crucial importance as they have enabled them to achieve a visibility and contact with the audience that are unprecedented for a festival devoted to Greco-Latin theatre.2. NT BEFORE AND DURING THE FESTIVALFocus: Use of New Digital Technologies at Cultural Festivals