“Thoughts from Japan on social media” by Jim Richardson
Use of social media in Japan is still in it’s infancy was something which I heard time and time again whilst in Japan, and though some seemed keen, others were not sure if the way in which UK arts institutions are using websites like Facebook and Twitter could work for Japanese audiences.
While Facebook is growing in Japan (ironically this is driven in part by the release of the film The Social Network) the major social media platform in Japan is MIXI, and this either doesn’t accommodate the marketing of brands in the same way that Facebook does, or it simply isn’t done.
One thing I found was holding back museums from embracing social media as much as they might like was staff time, Japanese museums don’t traditionally have marketing departments and those which do exist have limited resources, making it hard to manage social media properly.
Another cultural factor which may shape the way in which the arts use social media in Japan is that whilst in Europe and the United States society is very much based around individualism this is not the case in Japan, where they have a more collective outlook.
This seems to offer exciting opportunities for a medium which can bring people together to collectively co-produce experiences with arts institutions, and perhaps it will lead to deeper, more meaningful uses for these platforms then simple ‘likes’ and ‘tweets’.
My trip not only gave me a chance to reflect on the differences between the way in which European and Japanese art institutions use social media, it also proved inspirational with a trip to Japanese Media Arts Festival putting me in motion capture games and introducing me to Tweet Parade.
The Japanese speakers at the British Council Digital Creative Conference also presented some compelling case studies, with ‘The Complete Manual of Evacuation’ from Festival Tokyo proving particularly interesting to me.
This was a performance which brought audiences to 29 sites (which they called evacuation points) without telling them what they would find, here they would meet people who are ‘usually invisible in the shape of our present-day cities’ for example homeless people.
To select which ‘evacuation point’ you should visit, you answered questions on the ‘The Complete Manual of Evacuation’ website, these connected the public with performances based on the way they responded to questions.
I am intrigued by the idea of people attending 29 performances without knowing what they were, and I’d love to know the response from audiences when faced with challenging subjects like homelessness.
My trip to Tokyo was incredibly inspiring and I come home not only with new ideas, but with lots of new connections in my own social media network to help me to continue to learn from Japan and share ideas from the UK.
