The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly of Archaeology and Social Media

Doug Rocks-Macqueen

Survey of IT-Archaeologists

• Social Media is NOT free it costs time

• Social media = time, time = money, social media = money. But how much?

• (Stelzner 2011)- 42% spend 0-5 hrs wk. 33% spend 11+ hrs wk

• Time commitments increase: – 59% (less then a year SM exp.) spend 1-5 hrs per

week. – 47% (3 yrs or more expereince) spend 16+ hrs)

Not Everyone Benefits

• Generated exposure- 83%• Increase traffic- 72%• Improved search rankings- 62%• Partnership- 56%• Generated qualified leads- 51%• Reduced marketing expenses- 49%• Improved sales- 43%

What are the Costs?

Not instant gratification-

• Roughly 20% agree it helps (just started)

• About 75% (3 or more years of social media work)

1-3 hrs 11-15 hrs 16-20 hrs 40+ hrs0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

20%

50%

60%

70%

% who saw $ Return by Time Spent on Social Media

Social Media as an Individual

• Archaeologists fired for blogging

• Blogged about publically available information on ghost towns– Commercial archaeology crew chief i.e. temp

worker. No reason needed to be given to let go of employment.

• Happy ending- still has a great blog

This all leads to….

People quite here

Image from http://randomactsofscience.squarespace.com/

BUT this does happen

Not All Doom and GloomNon-social media: Top Journal articles over 90 daysInternational Journal of Historical Archaeology444335295291237 Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory677663626574510 Journal of Archaeological Research1049

527380346316 Journal of Maritime Archaeology1677 280276212192 Journal of World Prehistory911493472471438

Social Media• My blog- 17,000 views in

last 90 days

• John Hawks blog 16,000+ subscribers

• @AFBurialGrndNPS – 62,000+ followers (11,000 tweets)

Facilitates Conversations that Would Not Normally Occur

The good• Heritage Business journal

– Contributors from around the world most have never met

• Wikipedia/Wikiloot

• Projects were people have never met and might never meet are now occurring

Barrier• How many conversations

can you have?• Social media is not a

newspaper?• Social media is a bit like

your family and friends when they speak you are obliged to listen

In Closing

• Social media is a tool that can removes some limitations and facilitates interactions

• There are barriers– For organizations it costs time/money– For individuals- no protection, people know that

you’re a dog on social media– Social media creates conversations but you can

only keep track of so many conversations at once

• ….. but there are also advantages as well.