Excerpt from M.

Ellis Masters dissertation (written in 2011 while studying

in the UK) entitled: The Power of Tweets and Posts: exploring the impact
of social media marketing on the development of museum audiences



MUSEUM AS ADAPTIVE MEDIUM

Looking back to previous centuries, prior to the onset of widespread digital
activity, museums largely conducted a one-way stream of communication with
the public, where attention was placed solely on the collections in store. Object-
based information was to be doled out for the consumption of a passive
population. This communication was confined within the walls of the museum,
requiring individuals to come into the physical space to see art and objects and
learn about their histories. This museum experience remains intact today;
however, it has been vastly complicated by the launch of myriad digital media.
The Internet alone continues to develop at a rate with which businesses can
scarcely keep up. The use of the Web to organize our daily lives is now the norm,
and museums are charged with the task of adapting to such change, indeed
faster than they are accustomed to. In doing so, museum professionals have
shifted in focus from objects to people. Neil Kotler and Philip Kotler comment on
this key shift in saying, Whatever the reason for the focus on audience
museums are seeking ways to reach a broader public, forge community ties, and
compete effectively with alternative providers of leisure and educational
activities.
1
In addition, museums now concern themselves not only with user
experiences in the physical space of the museum, but also in the digital space
online. Areti Galani and Matthew Chalmers write that museums today are
[moving] away from the traditional design focus on a single users experience,
towards multi-user interaction.
2
As people are connecting to consume culture in
new ways, museums attempt to enter into those connections to increase
exposure and positively influence society.

In the aforementioned BBC Radio 4 interview conducted by John Wilson,
Manthorp was asked: to what extent have museums and galleries embraced this
digital future, this digital now? to which he replied, I think they started off a little
slow but theyve come to recognize that digital technologies can offer really
important, meaningful links across their audiences. I think that museums and
galleries have become much more porous through the use of digital technology.
3

Moments later in the same interview, Ross Parry remarked, The museum has

1
Kotler, N. and Kotler, P. Can Museums be All Things to All People?, in Museum
Management and Marketing ed. by R. Sandell and R. R. Janes (Routledge London and
New York: 2007), p. 313
2
Galani, A. and Chalmers, M. Empowering the Remote Visitor: supporting social
museum experiences among local and remote visitors, in Museums in a Digital Age ed.
by R. Parry (Routledge London and New York: 2010), p. 164
3
Manthorp, S. The digital future for museums and art galleries, BBC Radio 4 (2011)
been an adaptive medium over four centuries its changed its shape
radically.
4
Parry continued to speak of the way museums adapt to the modern
condition and how we need museums to collate and make sense of all the new
digital content, just as we needed them to centuries ago.
5
A glimpse into this
interview between Wilson, Manthorp and Parry reveals that museums are
steadily coming to terms with todays digital technologies, working to establish
their place as commentators on and participants in this global digital uprising.
The most common media that museums now use for participating in this digital
marketplace are social networks. The prevalent usage of the Social Web has
altered relationships, channels of communication, and museum marketing
practice.

Communication & The Social Web

In 1995, Amy Fahy predicted that the modern worlds mass move from analogue
to digital may precipitate an explosion in networking on a national and
international level, which may make it easier for all museums to participate and
furthermore that, for museums, the challenge will be harnessing the most

4
Parry, R. The digital future for museums and art galleries, BBC Radio 4 (2011)
5
Ibid.
appropriate technologies for their specific needs.
6
Today one can see plainly
that Fahys foresight was entirely accurate. The channels of modern
communication in the twenty-first century have been altered tremendously,
allowing individuals to adopt online personas and function in a complex
networked fashion across the globe. As a result of this, people are more
informed; they expect their views to be heard and considered and for the
opportunity to customize their choices on every possible occasion.

There is no doubt that the social networking realm of Web 2.0 namely
Facebook and Twitter has changed the way people communicate and gather
information about the outside world. For many, these two sites serve as chat
forums, group meeting places, news sources, and spaces for interacting with
friends and family members far and near. It has become commonplace to Like,
Tweet or Share something with Friends and Followers. These concepts have
spread rapidly to all areas of the Internet not just on the sites within which they
were invented (see Appendix II for explanations of Facebook and Twitter
terminology). Today these words are enmeshed into many a persons common
vocabulary, and the actions associated with each are now aspects of

6
Fahy, A. New technologies for museum communication, in Museum, Media, Message
ed. by E. Hooper-Greenhill (Routledge London and New York: 1995), p.94

contemporary culture. Fahys prediction of an explosion in networking on a
national and international level has been realized.

With the launch of Facebook in 2004, channels of communication began to
morph most noticeably, first for students and later for anyone with an email
address. Along with Wikipedia, YouTube and Twitter, launched in 2001, 2005
and 2006 respectively, Internet-based communication has shifted from single
streams between pairs of people to a tangle of interactivity between networks of
individuals and groups. The more one engages with a social networking site the
more they receive in terms of new knowledge, new friends, and meaningful
exchanges. Nina Simon acknowledges this phenomenon, stating that Web 2.0
serves as an application that gets better the more people use it
7
the reason
here being that social media are at their core about relationships, and it is well
understood that the more effort and communication you pour into a relationship,
the more strengthened and mutually beneficial that relationship becomes. This is
why strategic partnerships have recently become so important for museums and
other cultural organizations. We exist in a highly networked, relational world that
buzzes with ever increasing social and cultural activity. Simon uses the term me-
to-we to describe this development which enables cultural institutions to move

7
Simon, N. The Participatory Museum (Museum 2.0: 2010), p. 85
from personal to social engagement.
8
She continues, Successful me-to-we
experiences coordinate individuals actions and preferences to create a useful
and interesting collective result.
9
Of course, for quality relationships to exist in
this atmosphere, they must be valued. When any business uses Facebook or
Twitter, it must show that it values its users; without this, neither business nor
user receives true benefit from the act of being friends or following one
another. Vicky Godfrey, Marketing Officer at Nottingham Contemporary,
addressed this fact in her interview about the gallerys use of social media,
saying, I think you have to respect your followers and not use the platform as a
sales tool or broadcasting platform it really turns people off. You can tell when
organizations make posts without thinking about it I think it shows a lack of
care for people that follow you. If you look after them they will stay, if not they will
go.
10
The act of facilitating a dialogue with potential and existing museum
audiences is essential to the growth and sustainability of museums today.

Sandra Bicknell writes, In any communication the meaning of the original
message can be altered by the medium, and the message that is received is
determined to some extent by the visitors and their own unique circumstances

8
Simon, N. The Participatory Museum (Museum 2.0: 2010), p. 85
9
Ibid.
10
Godfrey, V. Interview by Margaret Hester, email, 6 June 2011
(their previous experience, their knowledge, the reaction to their environment,
how they are feeling, and so on).
11
This concept of the message being altered by
the medium is extremely important for museums using social media to
communicate with audiences. Facebook and Twitter are not only relationship-
based, but they are also informal in nature. These sites require a museum to
produce short snippets of information dealt in a conversational tone. The
research findings chapter of this paper will further discuss best practices in
communicating with audiences through Facebook and Twitter; however, for now,
it is necessary to acknowledge that messages are best received when adapted to
the medium through which they are sent, as Bicknell implies. This results in a
greater probability of online users responding in some way (e.g., submitting a
comment or reply, choosing to continually follow the museum, or visiting the
physical site itself) to the content based on their individual circumstances at the
time.

Reassessing the Purpose of Museums

As both audiences and businesses change in this digital climate, so too changes
the concept of the museum itself and the way it operates within society. In the

11
Bicknell, S. Here to help: evaluation and effectiveness, in Museum, Media, Message
ed. by E. Hooper-Greenhill (Routledge London and New York: 1995), p. 284
act of online engagement with the public, museums become more transparent
and, in turn, contradict that which they have come to represent through the
centuries: places of preservation, silence, and looking. Nick Poole, CEO of
Collections Trust in the United Kingdom, writes colloquially of his vision where
museums have renegotiated the social contract with the public so that people
everywhere understand that museums are places where culture is made and
celebrated, rather than preserved and hidden from view [where] we have
managed to re-code what the average punter thinks when she or he hears the
word museum, in which we have managed to retain the brand association of
trust and integrity but have moved on from the core value proposition being
looking at stuff to collaborating to understand and weave narratives around
stuff.
12
Digital media now allow or perhaps require museums to inwardly
explore and outwardly demonstrate these inherent changes.

Nina Simon writes about transferring the participatory qualities of Web 2.0 to
museums where dialogue with and contribution from the visitor is encouraged,
thus revealing the contrast between a traditional museums model of
communication to that of the participatory approach emerging from the digital

12
Poole, N. A New Way Forward for Museums, Collections Trust Open Culture blog 10
May 2011 http://openculture.collectionstrustblogs.org.uk/2011/05/10/a-new-way-forward-
for-museums/ [Accessed June 2011]
technologies of the twenty-first century. Figure 1
13
on the following page
illustrates this change one that has permeated the sector, causing museums
worldwide to re-evaluate mission, policies, methods of communication and
education, and the types of experiences they provide.


Simon continues, The chief difference between traditional and participatory
design techniques is the way that information flows between institutions and
users Supporting participation means trusting visitors abilities as creators,
remixers, and redistributors of content.
14
And finally, The growth of social Web
technologies in the mid-2000s transformed participation from something limited
and infrequent to something possible anytime, for anyone, anywhere.
15



13
Figure 1, Simon, N. The Participatory Museum (2010), p. 2. Drawing by Jennifer Rae
Atkins.
14
Simon in The Participatory Museum (2010), p. 2
15
Ibid., p. 3
Figure 1
Simons support of this shifting perspective on museum design and functionality
looking forward fits neatly within Hooper-Greenhills theory of the post-museum
one that encompasses the notion of renewing museum practice and purpose
alongside an evolving postmodern culture. She explains:

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, museums are re-
orienting themselves through imagining afresh what they can
become; familiar practices are being reassessed and tired
philosophies are being overturned. New ideas about culture and
society and new policy initiatives challenge museums to rethink
their purposes, to account for their performance and to redesign
their pedagogies.
16


Both Simon and Hooper-Greenhill are commenting on the current state of
museum change as a result of a digitized and globalized world, leaving with us a
forecast of what museums could be doing for their audiences from this point
forward. Hooper-Greenhill encapsulates the steady realization of the post-
museum, calling it a useful hook on which to hang conceptions that signal a
move into a positive and hopeful future for museums and also that one of the
key dimensions of the emerging post-museum is a more sophisticated

16
Hooper-Greenhill, E. Museums and education: purpose, pedagogy, performance
(Routledge: 2007), p. 1
understanding of the complex relationships between culture, communication,
learning and identity that will support a new approach to museum audiences.
17



17
Hooper-Greenhill, E. Museums and education: purpose, pedagogy, performance
(Routledge: 2007), p. 1