Linda’s defense, social media and the impact on museum image

Linda’s dissertation has been the third at TEC-CH to explore the use of social media in cultural heritage communication. Before Linda, Joao Paulo analyzed the impact of social networking on the growth of cultural knowledge, taking music as example of a cultural product and the specific case of Brazilian music on the web. Olga looked upon the potential of web 2.0 for communicating Italian cultural heritage and leaned on a case for adopting web 2.0 by a small museum in Italy.

Linda’s approach was an analytical one, focused on the way social media impacts on museum image and on the perceived benefits and disadvantages of its use in museum communication, from the perspective of museum decision-makers. Her hypothesis is that social media have changed the museum communication landscape and will consequently induce museums to change their communication strategy. Starting from the observation that there is an unequal integration of social media services in museum communication in the city of Geneva, Linda has tried to understand the reasons behind this, focusing on four museums in Geneva: The Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO) and the Centre d’art contemporain (CAC); Musées d’art et d’histoire (MAHs) and the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève (MEG). The results point to the fact that museums look at social media as a means to attract an audience that would not have been otherwise touched by typical museum communication. Though the results point at the openness and interest towards using web 2.0, they also highlight the limited amount of information that decision-makers have on the variety of tools and services now available (the decision-makers interviewed knew Facebook, and while two of them also used Facebook, none of the interviewees knew about Twitter). Regarding the content production strategy, it appears that the museums in her study which used social media tend to re-use existing content rather than creating it for scratch for publishing on a specific platform. The overall conclusion of her study is that the museums studied are aware of the benefits of using social media and of the positive impact they might have on their image, but are either reluctant to use them, or would use them in a very limited part of their potential, due to lack of human and financial resources, and especially due to lack of personnel specialized in communication through social media.