WORKSHOP 6: Social Media and Technology II
Friday
8 June at
9.00-11.00
Chair:
Jussi Puhakainen
Web Sites as New Communications Devices in
the
Arts Field
Helena Mäkinen (Department of
Marketing Turku School of Economics, Finland)
This paper investigates the use of the internet as the marketing communication media in the non-industrial cultural sector in Turku. Basically, the sector includes visual arts, performing arts and heritage, but only one sector, namely visual arts is discussed in this paper. Visual arts include paintings, sculpture, craft, photography as well as the arts and antique markets. The artists and art companies of these sectors can try to communicate their products and services to a target market individually, but they can also use collective action for the market promotion purposes. For example, the Turku-based Arsnet gallery represents an informal issue-based net that aggregates and mobilizes shared interests of artists and art companies. It helps cultural professionals to meet with the demand for cultural products and services.
The purpose of the paper is to show the type and extent of adoption of the Internet by artists, art companies and collective action nets in the visual arts field in Turku and its surroundings. The nature of the investigation is exploratory and qualitative. The sample comprises about 200 artists and art companies in the various sub-sectors of visual arts. The study reveals whether or not the artists and art companies use e-mail, have a Web site and have on-line sales. Moreover the study uses content analysis of the Web sites to analyze the communication appeals the Web sites use to enlarge the current customer-base and attract new customers.
Transport System Gets
Ubiquitous? Technology Services and
Changing Transport Policies
Anu Tuominen & Toni Ahlqvist (VTT
Technical Research Centre
of Finland, Finland)
The policy environment for transport has gone through several changes in the last decades or so. In the industrial society the transport problems related to the everyday problem of individuals and firms – how to get people or goods from one place to another. In the contemporary information society, different information services for transport users are produced as solutions to the rapidly approaching capacity limits of transport systems. In the not-so-distant future lurks the emerging phase of information society, which can be called the ubiquitous information society. In this “u-society”, it is argued, the functioning of society is based on different mobile, flexible and personalized ICT services. This development will have some impacts on the ways the people move and work. The field of the transport policy and management expands from macro-scale infrastructural level towards the micro-scale end-user level. The sphere of transport policy widens when the different parts of the transport system (infrastructure, vehicles, end-users) are interacting in mutual ad-hoc information networks. The whole transport “landscape” becomes more complex when different packaged and tailored transport solutions become the commonplace business practice of the actors in the transport system.
We suggest that in this context a concept called “technology service” becomes crucially important tool for understanding the dynamics between transport system and end-users. Technology service is a flexible and tailored combination, a socio-technical nexus, of technologies and services. Example of the technology service could be e.g. tailored package service for industries that requires flexible micro-scale identification connected to the macro-scale logistic fluidity. The emergence of tailored technology services brings new challenges to decision makers, businesses, and other societal actors. Consequently, the roles of public and private parties in the transport system will intermingle in different ways, new business models and operational practices will arise. Thus, transport system is also in need of innovations and creative interventions. The paper firstly reflects on the societal transformation from industrial to ubiquitous mode. Secondly, paper discusses in some detail the concept of technology service and its roles in the contexts of above mentioned three transport policy environments. Especially the policy-level impacts of the end-users are highlighted. Finally, the paper states that a more systemic understanding of transport is needed in order to creatively manage changes of the transport environments.
Fighting in the Past –
the Case of Tali-Ihantala Battle in the Second
World War
Jussi Puhakainen (Department of
Information Systems Science, Turku School of Economics, Finland) & Pasi
Malinen (Business Research and Development Centre, Turku School of
Economics, Finland)
Virtual museums have been discussed and developed a lot recently. Cultural heritage is another topic, which has gained more attention in the field of digitalisation of history.
The Tali-Ihantala Battle (TIB) was one of the key battles in the World War Two between Finland and Soviet Union. It took place between June 25 to July 9, 1944. The location was a area of around 100 km2 between the Gulf of Viipuri and the Vuoksi river. The end result of the battle was that the Soviet Union changed its tactics to forcefully try to invade Finland breaking through the Finnish army. There were some 50.000 Finnish and 150.000 Russian soldiers participating in the battle. The fighting resulted over 30.000 in casualties.
We present in this article recent trends in the virtualisation of museums and historical locations. We illustrate recent research on the subject and what are the key issues in turning history to digital form. Especial focus of the paper is on the initiative to create a virtual battlefield and museum for the TIB. We will also present similar initiatives from Finland and Europe, and discuss the common mechanisms behind these.
One common factor behind illustrated initiatives is that they do not solely rely on material already existing. Interactivity with broad audience (community-based approach) creates and stores in digital form “new history”. In TIBs case, these are memoirs, stories, photos etc. of people involved with the battle, given usually by their successors. Memories stacked into the closet live again in digital form.
The conference organisers reserve all rights to
any programme or schedule
changes.