Ephemeral Storytelling With Social Media: Snapchat and Instagram Stories at the Brooklyn Museum

Abstract

The usage of social media in the context of the museum visit continues to grow. This research examined Instagram and Snapchat stories shared by visitors at the Brooklyn Museum via semi-structured interviews and photo-elicitation. The results provide insights into the characteristics of this ephemeral media and the motivations behind these posts. Similar to traditional photography, ephemeral content on social media is often motivated by capturing an artwork found to be aesthetically pleasing, documenting a feeling, sharing an experience, or building self-identity. However, the content shared is shaped by the ephemeral aspect that motivates minimal curation and editing. The study results add to the rapidly evolving field of social media within the museum context. Moreover, it advocates for an active role for the museum to have policies and opportunities that respond to these behaviors and learn from the content shared informing interpretation and learning materials.

Public parks and the pandemic: How park usage has been affected by COVID-19 policies

“…First, we were only able to use geotagged photos from public accounts using this method, though we can see no obvious reasons this would bias our findings; there is no reason to expect that people with private accounts would post preferentially at specific parks or on certain days. Secondly, Instagram has a feature called ‘Instagram stories’ in which users can post photos temporarily (24 hours) for their followers to see [ 45 ]. Instagram stories have increased in popularity since the feature’s introduction in 2016 [ 45 ].…”

“…Secondly, Instagram has a feature called ‘Instagram stories’ in which users can post photos temporarily (24 hours) for their followers to see [ 45 ]. Instagram stories have increased in popularity since the feature’s introduction in 2016 [ 45 ]. As stories are transient and not public, our method could not capture data from Instagram stories.…”

The visual digital self: A discourse theoretical analysis of young people’s negotiations on gender, reputation and sexual morality online

“…Self-presentations based on images can include text, emojis, filters, GIFs and video effects. Additionally, metadata such as hashtags or user locations can be added to share an experience, document a feeling or present the self in an aesthetically pleasing manner (Villaespesa & Wowkowych, 2020).…”

Millennial Versus Non-Millennial Users: Context of Customer Engagement Levels on Instagram Stories (Extended Version)

“…Additionally, the study at the Brooklyn Museum by Villaespesa and Wowkowych (2020) also points out people's behaviours using Snapchat and Instagram stories. Ephemeral content (photography) often is motivated, just like previous photo-taking behaviour in the museum, by capturing a feeling, an aesthetically appealing museum artefact, sharing an image, and creating self-identity.…”

“…One of the latest trends and new user experience is ephemeral social media platforms that get popular every day by adding millions of users, which has recently attracted the attention of researchers (Bayer et al, 2016;Piwek & Joinson, 2016;Billings et al, 2017;Belanche et al, 2019;Chen and Cheung, 2019;Vázquez-Herrero et al, 2019;van Nimwegen & Bergman, 2019;Villaespesa & Wowkowych, 2020). Modest definition of ephemeral social media allowing users to share post images and videos that can only be accessed for a short period of time (Bayer et al, 2016).…”