Today, the East Side Gallery is an iconic place in Berlin. Every year, more than 4 million international visitors walk along the 1.3-kilometre long wall to admire the works that artists from all over the world produced after its fall. However, this visit does not stop there. Thanks to social media trends, where expressive images and impressive backgrounds steal the show, the East Side Gallery murals have become the perfect place to take the best shots for digital media. However, having a photo at the Berlin Wall, especially at the East Side Gallery, has different meanings for its visitors. This is where social media becomes an essential means for heritage site managers to listen to their users.
This paper explores the East Side Gallery from a fundamental element of e-participation: Digital active listening, and how this, through content analysis, could help Heritage Managers to know their audiences better, understand how users interpret the sites, evaluate whether their interpretation strategies are meeting the proposed objectives, and generate a constant connection and dialogue with the audiences of the sites, which can be significant inputs to create new interpretation strategies, make decisions, evolve the heritage management plans and above all to build with the different communities related to a site the future of that heritage.
Paper title: E-Participation and active listening: exploring their possibilities within heritage interpretation strategies in Berlin’s East-Side Gallery.
Topic: Heritage Management and Heritage Interpretation
Language: English
Year: 2021
Part of the Erasmus+ Heritage Scholarship Summer School
