Omnichannel Strategy of New Media Artists

McRae, K. & Todd, S. | December 2020

Exploratory research on the ways in which New Media artists build their online presences and address the challenges associated with establishing themselves online.

See full executive summary here (video clips removed for confidentiality/anonymity agreements): https://www.dropbox.com/s/2hjukugn44duiuw/Omnichannel%20Strategy%20of%20New%20Media%20Artists_Ex%20Summary.pdf?dl=0

See full moderator guide here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vzxqryoq72bvpsg/New%20Media%20Artist_IDI%20Structure%20%26%20Content%20Strategy.pdf?dl=0

Research Questions:

1. What are the challenges New Media artists face when distinguishing themselves online?
2. What is the process in which New Media artists build their online presence across different sharing platforms?

Research Objectives:

• Help product & service providers better accommodate the needs of their target users.
• Help product & service providers better direct their focus for future user-centric product & service development.

Population: 91 participating artists (77 anonymous survey respondents + 14 remote in-depth-interview (IDI) participants.

Strategy: Find broad-scope themes & patterns according to mass survey distribution, then explore those themes using IDIs.

Main Findings:

• New Media artists face challenges combating major social media platform algorithms & have developed strategies to overcome those challenges in which they enter subcommunities dedicated to their process, practice intra-channel promotion of their active accounts, and control their content flow.
• 60% of respondents reported they did not post the same artwork across all channels.
• Hashtags = #1 engagement tool implemented by New Media artists in this study.

Impact:

• Actionable insights for online art sharing platforms on potential product improvements.
• Clearly identified affects, cognitions and behaviors of New Media artists surrounding different sharing platforms and the type of works displayed per platform that help product & service providers better understand their end users.

Future Research & Recommendations:

• Conduct New Media artist subculture analysis (e.g. types of work created & mediums used to distribute that content).
• Practice community-centric thinking when developing future products & services.
• Analysis of media platform algorithms value add.
• Analysis of different algorithm alternatives on different media platforms.