Case Studies
Bletchley Park Social Media Campaign on BBC
Dr Black – and the small team that runs the Bletchley Park Trust – have made progress with their fundraising efforts. So far just under a million pounds has been donated to restoration work by the likes of Microsoft, IBM, and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
A vital component in this campaign has been what you might call the propaganda war – although one which has employed the most modern of weapons. Dr Black has assembled a significant crowd of supporters for Bletchley Park – geeks, history buffs, technologically literate celebrities – using all the modern social media tools.
There’s a “Save Bletchley Park Group” on Facebook, a group on the photo-sharing siteFlickr where images of the site can be viewed, and there’s a lot of activity on Twitter.
Dr Black told me she realised in December that a critical mass of people she knew in the computing world were now on the micro-blogging site, and decided to set up an account (@bletchleypark) for Bletchley Park. It’s acquired over 1,000 followers, but its influence has spread far wider, informing a tech-savvy crowd about developments at the site and used as a way of organising visits.
45% of the votes in the Building With Prides awards went to Bletchley Park, and it seems likely that many of them were mobilised by the various social media sites.
“We wouldn’t have won without social media,” Dr Black told me, “this kind of campaign wouldn’t have been possible a few years back. It’s power to the people.”
Bletchley Park – the Fry Effect on BBC Dot.life by Rory Cellan-Jones
