Mapping ACMI audiences

This research task involves measuring, mapping and exploring museum audiences, both online and onsite and aims to track the development of the institutional brand recognition in different parts of the world. Drawing on the museum visitation records and social media statistics, the GIS will employ visitation data to indicate quantities and geographic distribution of online and on site audiences at home and abroad.

The GIS technology will integrate geo-tagged data from social networks such as OpenStreetMap, FourthSquire, Tripadvisor and others to aggregate museums’ rankings from social media channels to demonstrate museum reputation in social media. For example, aggregating data from Tripadvisor will not only expose that ACMI has more than 1.2 thousand reviews from its visitors with 91 per cent “excellent” or “good” ratings, but will also indicate on the global map where reviewers come from, exposing correlations between geographical areas of the ACMI brand recognition and targeted locations of its activities.

In terms of onsite audiences, the task aims to map communities and neighbourhoods of local ACMI visitors.  Considering that Melbourne is a highly multicultural city, understanding the geography of ACMI visitors’ neighbourhoods will allow to explore their linguistic and cultural diversity. The main goal is to correlate the local visitation data with social demographic analytics of Melbourne boroughs that are associated with different immigrant communities. In this way mapping can not only help to understand which local communities are more engaged, but also who are the residents in these communities and what is their cultural background.