Is there an app for that? A case study of the potentials and limitations of the participatory turn and networked publics for classical music audience engagement

The participatory turn, fuelled by discourses and rhetoric regarding social media, and in theaftermath of the dot.com crash of the early 2000s, enrols to some extent an idea of beingable to deploy networks to achieve institutional aims. The arts and cultural sector in the UK,in the face of funding cuts, has been keen to engage with such ideas in order to demonstratevalue for money; by improving the efficiency of their operations, improving their respectiveaudience experience and ultimately increasing audience size and engagement. Drawing on acase study compiled via a collaborative research project with a UK-based symphonyorchestra (UKSO) we interrogate the potentials of social media engagement for audiencedevelopment work through participatory media and networked publics. We argue that theliterature related to mobile phones and applications (‘apps’) has focused primarily onmarketing for engagement where institutional contexts are concerned. In contrast, ouranalysis elucidates the broader potentials and limitations of social-media-enabled apps foraudience development and engagement beyond a marketing paradigm. In the case of UKSO,it appears that the technologically deterministic discourses often associated with institutionalenrolment of participatory media and networked publics may not necessarily apply due toclassical music culture. More generally, this work raises the contradictory nature ofnetworked publics and argues for increased critical engagement with the concept