museumsandtheweb.com - Facebook

What do we really know about social media in museums?

danaallengreil — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 21:32:10 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

twitter

Keywords:

Facebook

Keywords:

metrics

Keywords:

best practices

Keywords:

evaluation

Abstract:

With years of collective experience in social media engagement, many museums are stopping to ask themselves: what have we really learned about the audiences we are connecting with? Have we formed more meaningful relationships with our community and in the process, are we better serving the missions of our institutions? Could the future of our digital outreach be primarily based on social engagement and if so, are our organizations adapting rapidly enough to be prepared for this social future? Are our current social media practices engaging online communities to their greatest potential, or are we missing out on crowdsourcing, collaboratively learning, or other as-yet undiscovered social experiences? How can we better evaluate the success of our efforts and take our social media engagement to the next level?

This extended professional forum will use a range of social media platforms to engage museum professionals attending Museums and the Web and beyond in this discussion. This social media event component will begin before the meeting in San Diego 11-14 April using a wiki and other social media platforms, and the conversation about what we really know about social media, museum content, and cultural institution audiences will surely continue long afterwards as well. The aim is to engage fellow practitioners in defining the myths and assumptions we most want to “bust,” and to gather data in order to formulate testable hypotheses for this provocative discussion, culminating in a special professional forum at the MW2012 conference.

Type:

Professional Forum - discuss an issue

Professional Forum on "What do we really know about social media in museums?"

Site:

http://si.edu/Connect

Authors:

Elissa Frankle

Georgina Goodlander

Victoria Portway

Jeff Gates

Darren Milligan

Brian Alpert

Erin Marie Blasco

Sarah Banks

David Klevan

Amelia Wong

The Use of Social Media in the Danish Museum Landscape

nholdgaard — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:28:00 +0000

MW2011

Nanna Holdgaard, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract

This paper examines Danish museums' use of social media on their own websites and on external sites like Facebook. The paper takes its point of departure in a study of the Danish online museum presence through an analysis of the museums' websites and presence at social media sites. The results of exploring 123 Danish museum websites and social media presences show that half of the Danish museums use social media - art museums being the most active among the Danish museums. Despite the fact that half of the Danish museums are on Facebook and write blogs, the majority of museums on a general level communicate with a low degree of user interaction, participation and engagement. The paper concludes that Danish museums in general use social media in order to attract more visitors to the physical museums.

Keywords: museum, online presence, social media, Facebook, Denmark

Program Item Reference:

Online Presence and the Act of Not Just Being There. The Use of Social Media by Danish Museums

nholdgaard — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:14:00 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

The Use of Social Media in the Danish Museum Landscape

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

Facebook

Keywords:

Museum Websites

Keywords:

Denmark

Keywords:

online presence

Keywords:

survey

Abstract:

Through the last decades, a large amount of different initiatives have been set to explore, innovate and develop the presence of museums online both in an international context and in a Danish setting.

The aim of this paper is to examine how the Danish museums understand and approach online communication with a focus on the use of social media. So far, the empirical based knowledge of how museums' actually act online in terms of social media is very scarce. This study will provide new insights into the field of digital museum communication and point to challenges of the present museum website categories by and ask if we need new categories to describe the museums online presence and communication.

The paper will take its point of departure in an outline of the Danish online museum landscape through an analysis of the museums' online content. This includes the presentation of the results of a content analysis of all the 123 state-owned and state-subsidized museums' websites and a study of the museums' use of social media. The content analysis focuses on the use of images, videos and sound effects or podcasts on the museum websites. The scope is to analyze how the Danish museums present themselves online and to discuss whether or not German media researcher Werner Schweibenz' four museum website categories (brochure, object, learning, and virtual museum) cover the reality of today's online museum communication.

The main part of the paper will, with Facebook as an example, examine the museums' presence on and use of social media platforms, examining different cases of Danish museums' interaction and communication on Facebook. According to Facebook's own statistics, Denmark is one of countries with the highest percentage of users per capita and every second Danish Internet user has a Facebook profile. Hence, the outreach potentials for the Danish museums are presumably high. The initial results of the investigation of the museums' social media use show, that half of all the Danish museums are present on Facebook, typically with a 'like' page, but a marginal number of museums also have a profile or a group. The paper will also use data from interviews with museum professionals and Facebook users and a content analysis of selected museums' Facebook ‘like' pages, profiles, and groups. The final paper will analyze how Facebook as a social network site with its specific design and interface and possibilities of interacting create both great potentials and barriers for when the museums interact and communicate online.

In addition to the above mentioned survey of Danish museums online, this paper will draw on data from my Ph.D. project on Online Museum Communication from a User Perspective and on new and unique data from a national survey of the Danish Museums' Web Users (2010) by The Heritage Agency of Denmark.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Social Media and Beyond

Authors:

Nanna Holdgaard

Museum Games: Some Strategies for Achieving Project Goals

Eliza Goins — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:26:57 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Museum Games: Some Strategies for Achieving Project Goals

Keywords:

game design

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

Facebook

Keywords:

third space

Keywords:

RPGs

Keywords:

assessment

Abstract:

This paper examines the different strategies that may be used to develop museum games by focusing on two case studies currently underway at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The type of game and game play are the basic structural components of the game. Much like the narrative of a story, the game components must support the desired outcomes. Lack of clear definition of outcomes early in the design process may lead to games that do not address those outcomes. In addition, assessment is critical to understanding whether the game was successful and achieved the project goals. This paper reviews the different approaches taken by the development team in order to reach the educational goals and the methods of assessment incorporated into the projects from the outset.

The Rochester Institute of Technology and the Luce Center for American Art at the Smithsonian partnered together last year to create a prototype Facebook game application, myMuseum. A museum outreach tool in the form of a Facebook game, myMuseum incorporates contact zones and third space theory[1] to develop a model that would:

Engage nontraditional audiences
Provide interactive and meaningful access to digitized collections
Stimulate museum-community interaction
Teach basic terms and cognitive skills necessary to engage with museum objects
Change the perception of the museum from authoritative to collaborative

The second project is a role playing game (RPG) prototype being developed by RIT and the University of Delaware. In contrast to myMuseum, the Venerable Historian uses a quest type narrative structure to incorporate specific educational goals and outcomes for material culture education. The quest structure allows for the incorporation of the formal assessment methods required by educators working within post-secondary and higher education. The goals of the Venerable historian were to:

Create a tool that could be used both informally and incorporated into formal learning curricula for young adults
Develop different styles of quest narratives that combine high levels of engagement and achieve learning objectives
Bring together the multidisciplinary approaches used to study material culture in order to give students a broader understanding of the material

RPGs allow the player to immerse themselves in the world of the game. The game narrative is advanced through interactive quests that engage the player within the process. The Venerable Historian prototype focuses on the incorporation and assessment of pedagogical goals within some standard RPG quest formats and on finding the right balance between engagement (fun) and learning.

[1] Goins, “Museum Games and the Third Space.” Michigan State University, 2010. http://meaningfulplay.msu.edu/proceedings2010/mp20....

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Games

Authors:

Elizabeth Goins

Technologies, like Museums, are Social

jtrant — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:03:08 +0000

Bearman, D., & Trant J. (2008). Technologies, like Museums, are Social. Museums and the Web 2008.