Author Description

This report evaluates a pilot analysis of how social media was used during two significant regional cultural events: the large 'Dark Mofo' festival held at the Museum of Old and New Art (MoNA) in Hobart, Tasmania in June 2016, and the smaller Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival held in Winton, Queensland in June-July 2016. The study provides a snapshot of the scope for concentrated analysis of 'big' social media data to promote and support better understanding of how social media analytics can meet event organisers and other stakeholders' targets for successful planning and execution of tourism events. While this study focuses primarily on Twitter, it also identifies trends across Facebook and Instagram, as enabled by the TriSMA infrastructure. Using the TriSMA infrastructure for tracking social media that is hosted at the Digital Media Research Centre at QUT, the evaluation draws out the significance of event organisers, media, and event participants in shaping meaning surrounding the event, and the significance of geo-tagging of posts to platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to digital creative placemaking in the increasingly important regional cultural tourism economy.