USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS BY NON-PROFIT ART ORGANISATIONS 1

Use of Social Media tools by Non-profit Art Organisations in Hong Kong

Juergen Hoebarth

Hong Kong Baptist University

USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS BY NON-PROFIT ART ORGANISATION

Use of Social Media tools by Non-profit Art Organizations in Hong Kong

Social media is getting more and more popular. On Alexa’s list of the "Top 100 sites in Hong

Kong," Facebook is on place two and Youtube on place three.1 Both sites are referred to as social

media tools and a part of the Web 2.0 movement. This analysis was done as a part of my MPhil

research project at the Academy of Visual Arts. The analysis should give a short overview

indicating whether Hong Kong art organisations are already using these tools. This paper should

also support my research project in finding the right subjects to interview and analyse in depth.

Subject and Method

I selected 22 art organisations operating as non-profit organisations under Hong Kong law. The

selection includes both government and privately run organisations: the

Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Videotage, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Hong

Kong Museum of Arts, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Hong Kong Science Museum, JCCAC,

Hong Kong Arts Center, Hong Kong Museum of History, Hong Kong Racing Museum, Hong Kong

Space Museum, Hong Kong Art Development Council, Hong Kong Ballet, Hong Kong Academy

for Performing Arts, Public Art Hong Kong, Art Promotion Office Hong Kong, Parasite Art Space,

Osage Gallery, La Space, and Hong Kong Fringe Club.

The analysis focuses on the most common social media tools such as Facebook, YouTube,

Twitter and Flickr. These tools have been selected because they are very popular when it comes to

1 http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/HK
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the Usage around the Internet Users in Hong Kong (as mentioned in the Introduction).

This matrix analysis is based on 5 main questions concerning the use of social media tools among

art organisations in Hong Kong. The data that has been collected is derived from personal research

using various Web search engines and the social media tools themselves to find these organisations.

For the data collection the researcher searched for the art organisations directly using the social

media tools. This would be done as well if a normal user were looking to see if his or her favourite

art organisation is already using a particular social media tool.

1) Is the art organisation on Facebook?

1. If yes, are they using a group, page or profile?

2. How many fans do they have?

2) Is the art organisation on Twitter?

1. How many followers do they have?

2. Does the account look active?

3) Is the art organisation on YouTube?

1. If yes, how many video views do they have in total?

4) Is the art organisation on Flickr?

5) Does the art organisation promote any social media tool on their main Web site?

1. If yes, which social media tool they are promoting?

Analysis

Use of Facebook
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18

16

14

12

10
YES
8 NO
6

0
Use Facebook n=21

Figure 1: Use of Facebook (n=21)

HK Sinfonietta 250

Parasite Art Space 223

HK Ballet 438

HK Museum of Histroy 99

HK Arts Center 1864

Fans
JCCAC 359

HK Heritage Museum 3

HK Museum of Arts 327

HK Phil. Orchestra 1842

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000

Figure 2: art organisations with Facebook fan pages and number of fans (n=9)
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have around 1800 fans on their Facebook pages. One is the Hong Kong Arts Center, which has

about 1864 fans, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, which has about 1842 fans. An

interesting point is that, on both of their Web sites, the Hong Kong Arts Center and the Hong Kong

Philharmonic Orchestra promote the fact that they have a Facebook page . If we take a look at our

main matrix (Appendix 1), we see an interesting point. Organisations that advise their Web site

visitors that they have a Facebook page have significantly more fans. Concerning this fact, it looks

like there is a relation between the fan count and the integration of social media tools in the normal

means of communication such as Web sites, newsletter, and so on. Five of the 21 organisations have

Facebook links on their Web sites: the HK Philharmonic Orchestra (1842 fans), HK Sinfonietta

(250 fans), HK Arts Center (1864 fans), HK Art Development Council (528 fans), and HK Fringe

Club (1559 fans) (see Appendix 1).

Use of Twitter

18

16

14

12

10
YES
8 NO
6

0
Use Twitter n=21

Figure 5: Use of Twitter (n=21)

It seems that the use of Twitter as a communication and promotion tool by art organisations
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in Hong Kong is not very popular. There are just 4 organisations (see Figure 5) that have a Twitter

account. Asia Art Archive (http://twitter.com/AsiaArtArchive) has around 83 followers, but it seems

that there is no activity on the account. Videotage Hong Kong has a Twitter account

(http://twitter.com/Videotage), but their last post was made around 3 months ago with only 30

tweets in total. They have around 122 followers. The HK Art Development Council has a Twitter

account as well (http://twitter.com/hkadc), with 89 followers and a total of 97 tweets. Their last

tweet was posted around 1 month ago. HKAPA (http://twitter.com/HKAPA) has 49 followers and

102 tweets, and their last tweet was posted just a week ago. HKAPA seems to be the most active art

organisation on Twitter in Hong Kong. It looks as if Twitter has just been discovered by some of the

art organisations, but maybe they don’t know how to use them.
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Use of YouTube

16

14

12

10

8 YES
NO
6

0
Use YouTube n=21

Figure 6: Use of YouTube (n=21)

YouTube is used by 7 art organisations (see Figure 6), and it looks most of them are in the

performance art field. The HK Philharmonic Orchestra

(http://www.youtube.com/user/HKPhilharmonic) has uploaded around 70 videos since December

16, 2008 and generated since that time around 77,100 video views. HK Sinfonietta, which started

their YouTube channel on April 24, 2009, has uploaded around 6 videos with a total of 39,773

views, but one of their videos, “HKS McDull Music Project 4”

(http://www.youtube.com/user/hksinfonietta#p/u/3/JguM-FZeoR4), has more than 20,000 views.

Maybe its popularity is because of the link with McDull, a popular local comic figure in Hong

Kong. The HK Ballet has run its channel on YouTube since July 14, 2008 and has uploaded 20

videos with a total of 47,772 views among (http://www.youtube.com/user/hkballet). The Hong

Kong Art Development Council channel was established on June 11, 2008 and has 46 uploads and a

total of 19,804 views (http://www.youtube.com/user/hkadc). The HK Academy of Performing Arts,

founded in March of 2009, has 7603 views among their 16 video uploads on YouTube

(http://www.youtube.com/user/HKAPAPR).

The Asia Art Archive has a channel as well, but there is only one video with a total view

count of 196 views (http://www.youtube.com/user/asiaartarchive1). Videotage has a total of 2391

views (http://www.youtube.com/user/Videotage).
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It seems that YouTube is a good social media tool for performing arts and that people are

actually consuming the content that the organisations are providing as well. It is true that it is a little

bit harder for a visual arts organisation to make videos, but I think they could use this channel to

promote or review their openings and other events like Videotage is doing.

Use of Flickr

20

18

16

14

12

10 YES
NO
8

0
Use Flickr n=21

Figure 7: Use of Flickr (n=21)

Flickr seems to be the most unpopular social media tool among art organisations in Hong

Kong. Videotage and HKAPA are using Flickr. HKAPA shows some of their students on their Flickr

account (http://www.flickr.com/photos/41777916@N06/), whereas Videotage

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/Videotage/) is using it as a kind of documentation channel for their

exhibitions and events. Flickr is used very well by Videotage, and I think they may do it best

because they provide pictures of their events to their community. One reason that art organisations

may not like to use Flickr could be that they are hosting images on their own Web sites, but

concerning this particular issue, there no analysis was done.

Conclusion
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This analysis shows us that Facebook is the most popular social media tool (16 of

organisations) used by art organisations in Hong Kong, followed by YouTube (7 of 21

organisations), Twitter (4 of 21 organisations), and Flickr (2 organisations from 21). In total, there

are only 2 organisations, Videotage and HKAPA, that are using all 4 social media channels more or

less successfully. Organisations such as the HK Philharmonic Orchestra and HK Ballet are using

Facebook and YouTube quite successfully, and it is much appreciated that the HK Art Development

Council itself is using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. There is a limit concerning this analysis, as

it was done conducted with a random selection of known art organisations in Hong Kong, and all of

the data was collected with a deadline of May 14 2010. Concerning the future use of this data, it is a

great resource for my research project and will help me to find the art organisations that will be

analysed more in-depth during my MPhil project. The next steps will be to contact organisations

such as Videotage, the HK Philharmonic Orchestra, the HK Art Development Council, and HKAPA

to ask them for support during my research. The main target of this analysis was to find the

organisations that will be interviewed and analysed in-depth, and this goal was achieved.
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Appendix: Research matrix for data collection