The technological revolution has radically changed the way modern humans interact with the digital world. The emergence of the internet and the proliferation of social media have offered us new possibilities, such as communicating and interacting with friends, family, colleagues, and others from different cultures, transcending temporal and geographical distances and the limitations of physical presence. Furthermore, the digital world has offered a new mode of entertainment (e.g. streaming), education, work, product purchasing, and service provision, while providing access to a plethora of information and news, enabling users to stay quickly informed. According to Paoli and D’Auria (2021), these new social environments not only offer a means of communication and information access but also transform users into ‘hybrid entities’, giving them the ability to create their digital identity, become content creators, and express their preferences.
In these modern digital worlds, users can express themselves freely without constraints, while their anonymity can lead to more authentic and sincere expressions of themselves. The digital space reflects people’s personal and social realities. Their use affects their daily lives, their social relationships, how they communicate with others, their psychology, their education, and our society itself. Therefore, understanding these digital worlds, as well as the behaviour and interactions of users within them, is essential.
Through digital ethnography, researchers have access to a rich source of data that allows the study of users’ digital behaviour. Digital ethnography is essential for understanding users, their preferences, their behavior patterns, their cultural differences, and their reactions within the digital world. Observing and analysing the content of social media can reveal current trends, significant issues and cultural trends, values, and preferences prevailing within a society.
In this context, the project LOCUS (sociaL media, yOuth and Consumption of cUltural Spaces), through the use of digital ethnography within the broader framework of a multi-methodological research approach, aims to explore the interactions of young people aged 16-30 with cultural spaces through the lens of social media and to understand their experiences, preferences, and behaviours. Digital ethnography is one of the approaches used to monitor and understand the behaviours and practices of young people on social media, providing a picture of their interactions and enabling the rich collection of real-time data. The research focuses on three case studies in the city of Athens, specifically the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), the Onassis Stegi, and the Acropolis Museum. The project aims to explore and understand how young people communicate on social media, their habits, preferences, and their way of interacting in digital cultural spaces, specifically on the Instagram accounts of the three case studies. The results of the project will contribute to informing cultural organisations to deeply understand the importance of social media in the relationship that young people have with cultural spaces and to maximise their interaction with them. Young people are at the core of the digital age, and their active participation in digitally mediated cultural spaces will contribute to shaping the contemporary cultural landscape.