ABSTRACT

Visitor engagement and learning, outreach, and inclusion are concepts that have long dominated professional museum discourses.  The recent rapid uptake of various forms of social media in many parts of the world, however, calls for a reformulation of familiar opportunities and obstacles in museum debates and practices. Young people, as both early adopters of digital forms of communication and latecomers to museums, increasingly figure as a key target group for many museums.  This volume presents and discusses the most advanced research on the multiple ways in which social media operates to transform museum communications in countries as diverse as Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, the UK, and the United States.  It examines the socio-cultural contexts, organizational and education consequences, and methodological implications of these transformations. 

part |57 pages

Framing the Dilemmas Curation or Cocreation?

chapter |16 pages

The Trusted Artifice

Reconnecting with the Museum's Fictive Tradition Online

chapter |21 pages

Social Work

Museums, Technology, and Material Culture

part |77 pages

Researching the Dilemmas The Iterative Design/Research Process

part |52 pages

Facing Dilemmas, Designing Solutions

chapter |24 pages

Communication Interrupted

Textual Practices and Digital Interactives in Art Museums

chapter |6 pages

New Voices in the Museum Space

An Essay on the Communicative Museum