Tonight I’m working on my placement report for my MA. Out of all the pieces of work I have to complete for my course in the next three months this one is the snake in the grass – the one I have identified the need to devote extra amount of time to for it is sneaky. It cowardly hides behind the layers of module coursework work and in the looming shadow of the summer dissertation. It is a 6k critical and contextual evaluation into the whole placement experience and needs to be taken down as soon as possible!
My placement is undertaking a digital evaluation of the WE PLAY programme. I am currently two thirds of the way through this evaluation and have so far found it very engaging. Questions regarding how we measure the impact of digital and social media have risen during my work. Exactly how does the number of ‘likes’ ‘views’ and ‘comments’ translate into success and measurable impact on physical projects?
This was rammed home by my rare night watching the Brit Awards on TV Wednesday night. Keeping one eye on this highly glossed cringing yawn fest (and realising I really don’t know who half of these kids are), the only moments that really piqued my interest was when an artist won an award. As the voice-over man rolled off facts and record sales as the winner took to the stage, he launched into statistics of YouTube views, Facebook likes and Twitter followers, placing these on the same industry pedestal as the cold, hard cash transactions that are record sales. I was suprised as the last time I watched a music award show this definitely wasn’t the case and shows the impact that social media has had in creating artists and their personas. (Lady Gaga and her 19 million Twitter ‘Monsters’ surely is the best example of this).
If the music industry directly attributes YouTube views of music videos to high record sales/download figures, then what are the best tools for translating the number of YouTube views of a 3 minute video clip documenting a collaborative arts project into measurable success? Answers on a postcard, I mean, in a report…
