The Use Of Social Media For Raising Awareness Of Cultural Heritage And Promoting Industrial Heritage In Indonesia

Abstract

When the physical present is not available as an option, going digital is another way to keep cultural heritage awareness going. One of the most popular and easy to use digital platform to this day is social media. Social media is fundamentally designed as a participative medium. Users expected to participate, without physical present, through sharing and contributing contents and contextual information such as photos or personal diary entries. Social media users can also participate in cocurating of memories collection and networking building with other users, in fact there are opportunities to raise the exposure for the cultural heritage awareness. Among the defined types of cultural heritage, industrial heritage is one of the least known forms of heritage, so there is a need to promote this form of heritage. Awarded in 2019 as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the city of Sawahlunto is located 90 kilometers from Padang West Sumatra. Due to the location constrain, the city of Sawahlunto is hardly to be the sole tourist destination despite its potential, thus the need to promote the city of Sawahlunto and industrial heritage will be a major task and the need to utilize the most current alternative media , which is social media, is crucial. This paper analyse the result of a study on how the content of Instagram, as one of the social media applications that use the visual platform, can be used for raising awareness of cultural heritage, moreover the aim of this study is to understand the relationship between Instagram contents and Cowans’s diplomacy technique namely: monologue, dialogue, and collaboration as a mode for engaging social media users as the audience to raise awareness of cultural heritage and promoting the least known of industrial heritage.