Workshop: Digging Archaeology through Social Media
Public outreach is an essential part of archaeology. To ensure ethical accountability to impacted communities, policy-makers, and funding bodies, the relevance of archaeological research must be shared with the wider public. In the last two decades, digital opportunities for facilitating such outreach have developed significantly since the earliest discussions of ‘digital public archaeology’, as has internet connectivity and the online presence of modern society in general.
Social media forms an excellent medium for archaeologists to share research and results, while also enthusing the general public—and each other—regarding the discipline. Familiarity with the media-consumption habits and needs of particular groups is therefore important, as is an understanding of how social media can be used to share and highlight current archaeological research.
To further explore this topic, we will be hosting a FREE online workshop on Gather Town focusing on the dissemination of archaeological research through social media. Part of the workshop will be dedicated to like-minded archaeologists—including individual researchers, museums and research institutions, heritage organizations, and one-time projects—sharing their experiences on social media outreach. There will also be the opportunity for participants to have their social media presence reviewed by a professional outreach coach Petra Kevenaar of social media management bureau “Hashtag Junkies” in a smaller-scale interactive session.
The program can be viewed and downloaded below. If you’d like to participate, please send an e-mail to Sasja@vanderVaart-Verschoof.com
(This review will involve contact between Petra and participants in advance of the workshop to discuss your profile and your goals, a discussion by Petra during the workshop of the strengths/weaknesses of your online presence and customized advice and a follow-up with Petra after the workshop. If you would like to have your profile professionally analyzed (for free!) by Petra as part of the workshop, please let us know and send us your handles. If we have more applications than slots, we will select from amongst the applicants. Please be aware that this will involve public discussion of your profile so that we can all learn from Petra and each other. In order to gain the most benefit from the session, we ask that applications have at least one established social media account related in some way to archaeological outreach.)
