"Here we go again": Co-construction of museums and audiences on Facebook

The massive proliferation of online museum communication in general, and the dramatic uptake of social media in particular, pose fundamental questions to the ways in which museums position themselves in relation to key stakeholder communities (Drotner & Schrøder, 2013, Giaccardi 2012, MedieKultur 2011, Runnel et al. 2013). This presentation addresses this process of re-positioning as follows: how do museums and audiences co-construct one another through Facebook? Audiences are defined as actual and potential museum visitors and a key stakeholder group for online museum communication. Facebook is one of the most popular social media with museums in many parts of the world. On social media such as Facebook, online communication is precisely about interaction and dialogue between the museum and its audiences; but systematic knowledge is still hard to come by providing answers to how much interaction and dialogue exists, and how these modes of online communication are established, upheld and developed. Based on in-depth analyses over a fortnight’s Facebook communication at nine Danish museums of varying sizes and regional location, the presentation offers an analytical model of social media communication; and it presents cases and preliminary results of how museums and audiences address one another on Facebook. While downplaying the ’what’ of social media communication, we focus on the ’how’ in terms of mutual modes of address (e.g. singular, plural), degrees of linguistic formality and genres of engagement (e.g. ranking, quizzes, collaboration). We argue that our results are important for the museum sector at large because they illuminate key aspects of current processes of museum re-positioning. In addition, our results offer a sobering empirical corrective to the often celebratory claims made to the de-stabilizing of institutional authority and control wrought by social media. Our preliminary results are perspectivised in terms of best practice for museum professionals.