COMPARATIVE SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS OF THE ART GALLERIES IN TURKEY

Abstract

Art marketing aims to sell art works and create areas of artistic experience offering value to the people. As a part of the art industry, art galleries also use social media for this purpose in their marketing efforts. In this respect, social media for art galleries is a digital platform that bridges the gap between artists, collectors and those interested in buying or in viewing art. In this respect, it is a research topic how art galleries can use this platform effectively. Wtihin this research framwork, the aim of this study is to investigate whether the number of followers on social media of art galleries operating in the Turkish art industry is affected by the regular content sharing of the galleries and the topics of these contents. For this purpose, the number of content shared by art galleries in social media and their subjects were examined comparatively between the pandemic process and the pre-pandemic period through descriptive statistic method. Since Istanbul is the center of art in Turkey, the sample of the research was chosen as the galleries in Istanbul. A descriptive statistical method was used to compare art galleries between May 2018 and May 2020, when the Covid 19 Pandemic led to a rapid digital transformation.The findings show that the use of social media by art galleries varies according to the age groups of the artists they work with; content production that can meet expectations is necessary rather than content distribution frequency in art galleries which work with older artists.