I had the privilege to present at the ACHS 2020 (Association of Critical Heritage Studies) virtual conference on 28 August. Since this conference and their programme was limited by a paywall, I’d like to share here the panel I participated in and the abstract for my presentation.
The panel was titled “Approaching Institutions and the Built Environment” and it was part of the “Future Methods and Approaches to Critical Heritage Studies” strand of the conference.
My fellow panelists and their presentation titles were as follows:
- “Under the Wing of Concrete: the Phenomenon of the Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports” by Aida Stelbiene from the Association of Architectural Quality Development.
- “Outside the Archive. Researching and Writing critical Histories of Collecting” by Dr. Mirjam Brusius from the German Historical Institute
- “Social Meaning Mapping: A digital research tool for exploring visitors, museums and collections” by Dr. Dimitra Christidou from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology
My presentation was titled “From takeover to debacle: An analysis of the Nympghate network using Twitter data” and the abstract is as follows:
On January 26, 2018 the painting Hylas and the Nymphs was temporarily removed from the Manchester Art Gallery’s walls and taken underground to its store. The removal was part of an artist takeover event that sought to reinterpret historic works of art within contemporary social and cultural contexts. In this presentation, I will explore the mediatized debacle that resulted from this takeover — hereafter the Nymphgate network. I will focus on the collection of Twitter data using Google Spreadsheets and its analysis through a mixed-method approach. I will describe how the network took shape by quantifying Twitter metadata and use content analysis to discuss how users’ narratives were influenced by a series of actors. In this session, I will argue in favour of using mixed-methods to better understand online discourses initiated by cultural institutions and to demonstrate the inseparability of digital and non-digital actors in shaping these discourses. Finally, I will close by discussing the ethical considerations I took to design the study and present its results.
This presentation was pre-recorded as a 15 minute video where I focused on the methodological aspects of my case study (the Manchester Art Gallery), particularly in relation to collecting, analysing, and presenting social media data.
If you made it to this point and have decided that you would like to have a copy of the video, please let me know and I can send you a link.
Finally, I am open to discussing my research with you in any format you are most comfortable with. So do get in touch and let’s talk!