Augmenting the agora Mediekultur

MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research, 2014

Mirroring digital culture developments in society at large, museums are increasingly incorporating social media platforms and formats into their communication practices. More than merely providing additional channels of communication, this development is invested with an understanding of social media as integral to the ongoing democratisation of the museum. The confluences of new media affordances with New Museology objectives along with the underpinnings of the aforementioned understanding is discussed in this article. The article will argue that development in this area is not only driven by solid results and public demand but also by collective assumptions and associations as well as by a political need for institutions to justify their relevance in society. In conclusion, the article suggests that, while the integration of social media communication may serve to market the museum as inclusive, it may also simply pay lip service to genuine civic engagement and democratic exchanges with the public.

MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research, 2014

Most of the chapters that make up this book originate in a symposium hosted by the Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials (DREAM) in October 2010", the editors Kirsten Drotner and Kim Christian Schrøder tell us in their introduction (p. 8). Only a few, it appears (and we are not told which), have been solicited especially for this publication. Having now worked my way through the ten chapters of Museum Communication and Social Media, I have trouble grasping what the book as a whole is supposed to give me. And I wonder whether a more thorough editorial eff ort might have contributed both to the reading experience and the scholarly value. To tell the truth, I wonder what must have gone wrong for the experienced editors (and brilliant scholars), whose somewhat confused introduction has very little connection with the chapters that follow (except, of course, in the passage that summarises all ten, one by one), a problem that culminates in their surprising claim that "[i]n this volume we have collected eleven research articles" (p. 12, my emphasis). One problem with the reading experience is the repeated enthusiastic exordia of many of the chapters about the wonders of the social media and how they have been appropriated by one of the coveted but diffi cult audiences for museums nowadays: young people. One might have expected the editors' general introduction to the fi eld to set the scene once and for all. Had the book been a monograph, this would have been a matter of course, but the editors of a collection ought to be precise in their commissions and heavy-handed

2014

The opening of museums to society brought about radical changes in the museum practice, because their goal is not only the viewing of exhibits but a meaningful contact and communication with the public. According to this view, museums are trying to approach a wider audience, providing them with the opportunity of personalized use of information and active creation of content in an entertaining and interactive way. The following study explores various approaches that the social media (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Linkedin) can provide to museums, aiming at a constant communication and interaction with the audience. The vertiginous technological development, the digitization, the dissemination and democratization of knowledge, as well as the systematic information of the public by the mass media, have significantly influenced the museums in the way they promote their activities. The social media can be low-cost communication tools while addressing to a wider audience, as they can provide museums with the opportunity to benefit in many ways from their use, offering them the ability to give prominence to both their dynamic nature and the purpose of their actions. By studying the cases of important museums in Australia, America and Europe, it becomes immediately clear that the social media have already formed a basic communication tool for the museum's exhibitions and for the other traits that highlight the educational and entertaining dimension of their character.

2010

This article draws attention to the unlimited roles of the use of social media in museums and highlights the need of engaging museum communities by using it. Social media can open an endless discussion and understanding of museums" collections. It also can remove museums" physical walls and make engagement much easier for many users with physical access difficulties through its diverse platforms including Facebook and Instagram. In addition, it opens the doors for more creativity, designs, concepts, and ideas in museums. Social media is an effective tool and capable to turn visitors into active participants. According to (Nina Simon 2010), engaging in participatory museums can occur at different levels starting from the users as passive consumers, and ending with the full participatory atmosphere. The increasing access to the Internet has put the power of communication in museums. Furthermore, social media can help museums to generate or develop public knowledge by letting participants share images, information, and experiences with surrounding groups of people.

During the last years, the explosion of social media, the emergence of new participatory services and multiple internet technologies which can all be described under the term Web 2.0, have changed the way we think about the Internet for ever. The revolutionary Web 2.0 offers new communication potentials of interaction among users, enabling them to exchange ideas, opinions and information. These changes offer multiple and unknown – till now – potentials for the cultural organizations and museums to broaden their audiences, engage more people and social groups with their activities, thus maximizing their communicative role and the participation of all members of the community. This article will explore the great impact of Web 2.0 in the museum world and the challenges that museums need to deal with under these promising circumstances. Furthermore there will be presented some representative case studies of museums abroad, their current policies and the ways they have introduced participatory technologies in various fields of the museum work. The article will also try to present the way that greek museums have responded till now to the new communication challenges and to what extent they have embraced participation and social networking. Last but not least, the article aims to depict the complex, yet very promising technological world of museums, to show its strengths and weaknesses, to describe practices and policies. Through the parallel dialogue of theory and practice, the article will try to point out the mission and the essence of the new communication culture in its museum dimension. Note: The current article was the result of the speech presented during the 1st International Workshop entitled VIRTUAL ARCHAEOLOGY: Museums & Cultural Tourism (VAMCT) which took place at Delphi, on September 2013. Urfortunately, the article was not accepted for the special issue of International Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, though the author published it on Academia, thinking that it could be helpful for the interested audience and the researchers out there.