Information, Community, and Action

Additionally, some of the founders shared their insights in the value of the world being exposed to PPSE’s Facebook:

For me I think the social media is very important, not only for Cambodia, but for the world contact. Social media can show our activities, promote our school, or connect with the world. So its very important. Because you know, everyone has access to the social media . . . Cambodian people, even now they don’t really buy art, they don’t appreciate the art. . . They may say ohh art is important, but they don’t invest or they don’t give art value. They don’t buy the art. But social media can help them understand more, so in the future this can change. . . When people learn they understand, then they give art the value, and then support. (P7 February 14, 2018).

I think about the world exposure, I think that it is very important to see about what is going on today in Cambodia. What is different 20 years ago and today. And social media is an important role. It makes global relation. Sometimes we can’t find real information, social media and technology makes people know you are around. Before, even though we have art, people had to travel around the world to experience art, but some people have no way to travel. So people can travel by social media. They can study about the art (P8 February 13, 2018).

Finally, in Cambodia social media has also become essential for Cambodian people to find news. Particularly Facebook is the most ubiquitous and important social media platform for finding news and information, because the media is state owned and corrupt. When I asked what is the most popular social media platform in Cambodia, the answers were unanimously,

Facebook. P1 stated, “Facebook. To the nth degree. . . . Here it is Facebook, as it is how

Cambodians are getting most of their news. It’s how they know what is happening, because the media is all controlled by the government (February 5, 2018).

4.2 Information, Community, and Action

In this section, I will present the findings of how PPSA and PPSE use social media. First I present the frequencies of information, community, and action posts that were found during the content analysis. I supplement these findings with insights from the interviews, to see why the

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organization made certain choices in their posts. Finally, I provided further insights about what type of content PPSA and PPSE post such as images, video, blogs, news articles, text posts, etc.

4.2.1 Frequency

Frequencies were measured to see how often PPSA and PPSE made information, community, and action posts. As seen in Table 4 PPSA’s Facebook had 54% information, 20%

community, and 26% action posts. The Twitter platform was quite similar with 54% information, 23% community, and 23% action. However, the Instagram strategy was vastly different with 83% informational, 12% community, and 5% action.

Table 4: PPSA’s Frequencies of Information, Community, and Action Posts

Social Media

When asking interviewees P4 and P5 to elaborate on their Instagram strategy, both explained that since Instagram is such a visual platform, it is the ideal place to exhibit the beauty of Phare with captivating photography and some hashtags. Most of the posts were categorized as informational, because the captions solely stated what was happening in the picture or they featured a lighthearted caption that served no purpose except to make followers smile. Hashtags such as #circus, #Pharecircus, #socialcircus, #Battambang, #cirque, #Cambodia, #travel, and

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#responsibletourism were used often to increase followers. Generally photos were tagged with between 15-30 hashtags in order to increase following. In fact, while I was interning at PPSA, the following increased from around 700 followers to over 1000 using this strategy.

Instagram rarely had call to action posts and community posts, because the point of these posts was to convey the daily life of PPSA through beautiful photographs. For Instagram, the posts that did constitute as action were the circus schedules with a caption telling guests to buy tickets, posts that promoted the gift shop, and posts that featured a captivating photo, yet the caption encouraged followers to purchase circus tickets or come take a tour of PPSA. For community posts these entries were ones with shout outs to photographers and thanks to partner organizations. Often partner organizations were featured by using the @ and the caption was in written in a way that directly acknowledged them.

Overall the Facebook and Twitter were basically the same strategy. Most of the posts were focused on showcasing the daily activities of the organization, and then the others were split between shouting out to community members or trying to attract people to take a tour or come to the circus. Usually on the first day of the month, PPSE posted the circus schedule with a link for how to purchase tickets. These posts often featured command words such as “buy, purchase, or get.” So they were categorized as action posts. Also there were some posts with blog links, and the wording of the post encouraged users to click on the link. Since the blog page had a donation box at the bottom of the page, I decided that if the language indicated for people to click or check this link out, then it was constituted as an action post.

PPSE had a different social media strategy than PPSA, especially in terms of community engagement type postings. For Facebook 33% were community engagement, while Instagram

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was 42% and Twitter was 32%. PPSE had a lot more cross-organizational tagging and recognition to community members. PPSE’s frequencies are presented below in Table 5:

Table 5

PPSE’s Frequencies of Information, Community, and Action Posts

Social Media

One of the organizations that Phare Circus made shout-outs to regularly was the ‘Made in Cambodia Market’. In the interview I asked why there were so many posts about this place.

Interviewee P1 stated:

Made in Cambodia Market is one that supports local artisan and local small

entrepreneurs. We have been engaged with them since the beginning, and their beginning sort of coincided with our very beginning . . . So we have always been there since day one, engaging with them. The other thing that we have tried to do on our posts, is if we are sharing anything like a media report about things to do in Siem Reap, and it mentions other businesses, we always try to tag those other businesses. (February 5, 2018)

For PPSE the Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter strategy were similar, however Twitter and Facebook featured mostly informational posts while Instagram was mostly for community.

This was because Instagram was used to share the works of professional photographers, and when this was done acknowledgements were made using the @ symbol.

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Overall PPSA and PPSE had many similarities in their posting style. Both relied heavily on photography and video and their posts portrayed the daily activities of the organizations. Also both PPSA and PPSE showed a personal side of their organization by introducing blogs that featured stories about the students, performers, and staff of the organization.

Some of the ways that PPSA and PPSE highlighted and displayed their activities were with photographs short video clips, and live feeds. Live feed has become particularly popular with PPSE, and they especially try to make Facebook Live posts when the circus performers give free street performances or when they are doing something within the community. PPSA uses Facebook Live to also show street performances as well as special activities on campus such as a dress rehearsal for a news show, a new mural being painted, or a collaborative project of visual and performing arts students.

During the interviews the topic of using Facebook and Instagram live feed was discussed, and interviewee P5 shared some insights of why it is so effective:

I think utilizing Facebook live, Cambodians get excited and comment a lot, because they think its beautiful. Cambodians love their art, they love the Apsara dance and the shadow puppets, so I think it is important for Phare to use social media to maintain a conversation and maintain their relevance within in Cambodia. . . so the more they can involve the local community, the stronger they will be in the future. (February 10, 2018).