An Ethnographic Study of the Kansas Historical Society's
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FACE, SPACE, AND ANXIETY: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF THE KANSAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY’S SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE by SJOBOR HAMMER Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Cognitive Linguistics CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY May, 2015 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the thesis of Sjobor Hammer candidate for the degree of Master of Arts *. Committee Chair Todd Oakley Committee Member William Deal Committee Member Mark Turner Date of Defense March 17, 2015 *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. To Mom, Dad, and Nathan TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... 5 ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... 7 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................................. 1 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE KANSAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY .................................. 14 METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................................................... 19 ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................................... 28 STRATEGIES AND CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................... 50 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................... 55 1. TWITTER POSTS .................................................................................................................. 55 2. FACEBOOK POSTS: KANSAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY ......................................................... 120 3. FACEBOOK POSTS: KANSAS STATE HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICE ........................... 164 4. FACEBOOK POSTS: KANSAS MUSEUM OF HISTORY ......................................................... 210 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................... 227 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Face threatening acts according to face threatened……………………………23 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who helped and encouraged me in this work. I particular, I would like to thank the staff of the Kansas Historical Society and my committee members Professors Todd Oakley, William Deal, and Mark Turner. Face, Space, And Anxiety: An Ethnographic Study Of The Kansas Historical Society’s Social Media Usage ABSTRACT by SJOBOR HAMMER Social media has emerged as an ideal medium for the creation of online spaces that promote discussion and the sharing of ideas between individuals. For cultural institutions, this medium can help bring together community members to further the aim of the institution: the education of community members and preservation of local history (Levin 2007; Rosenberg 2011; Karp 1992). However, restrictions on time, staff, and funding, as well as self-reported anxiety (KSHS 10/28; 11/18) around the use of social media lead to online spaces that are distant, awkward, or threatening, to which few or no community members will contribute. This paper examines issues of institutional face creation through a case study with the Kansas Historical Society. Utilizing Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson’s Politeness Theory (1987), as well as Paul Grice’s Cooperative Principle (1989), I argue that individual anxieties bleed into online spaces and negatively affect the Society's ability to connect with community members in a meaningful way. Introduction Museums and cultural institutions offer a focal point for communities around which individual and group identity narratives are formed (Rosenberg 2011). Social media has become a cost-effective tool for cultural institutions to create spaces for communities to share and discuss these identity narratives. However, many museums struggle to serve their local communities due to small budgets and staff, some functioning with only one part- or full-time staff member (Levin 2007).With fewer staff members, it becomes difficult to invest time in activities, such as the upkeep of social media, which benefit the education and growth of the community especially when these activities are in addition to an already full workload. When restrictions in budgets and manpower are coupled with the stressors of restrictions in a museum’s presentation and a lack of confidence with using social media, the result can be a space that feels not positive and welcoming, but awkward and uncomfortable. This paper examines one such institution, the Kansas Historical Society, and the efforts of its promotional team on social media. Using Politeness Theory (1987) and Paul Grice’s Cooperative Theory (1989), I examine how one team’s insecurities and stressors are manifested online by comparing individual self-report with social media posts from the last year. Lastly, I outline some strategies for museums looking to improve their online presence. Literature Review Museums and cultural institutions are capable of forming strong bonds between themselves, individuals, and communities, frequently in the form of nostalgia or pride in a community narrative. The ways in which they do this have been a great subject of discussion among museum scholars, often in defense of these public institutions under 1 threat from structural budget cuts. Many museums and libraries are the recipients of federal funding, which when compared to spending in other high profile areas, can seem outside the responsibility of the federal government (Alizar 2009). Consider the proposed federal budget for 2015 from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan who argues, The Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services is an independent agency that makes grants to museums and libraries. This is not a core federal responsibility. This function can be funded at the state and local level and augmented significantly by charitable contributions from the private sector. (2014) Though Ryan’s budget did not pass, and arguably never will, individuals like Susan Boren, a specialist in social policy legislation, noted: Funding for the arts and humanities is a perennial issue in Congress. Although arts funding represents less than 1% of the...FY2007 total estimated budget...Congress continues to address the concern of whether federal funding is crucial to sustain arts institutions. (2009) Because of the constant need to defend federal funding for cultural institutions, groups such as the American Library Association and the American Alliance of Museums have made advocacy for funding part of their normal operations (aam-us.org; ala.org). Both groups argue that cultural institutions are highly beneficial for a region’s economic and educational success. Others such as Amy Levin and Tomas Alizar note that museums and libraries are just as much members of the community as individuals are, and through curation and promotion, can bring together communities and affect the identity narratives of those communities (Karp 1992; Levin 2007; Rosenberg 2011). Such dialogue has been 2 limited almost exclusively to the field of museum sciences, but I believe museums and other such institutions can benefit from a cognitive linguistic approach to how museums interact with members of their communities. Amy Levin writes about our adapting communities and how museums adapt to new narratives of place and identity. Local museums, in particular, are an expression of community identities. When, as often happens, people talk of their ‘roots,’ they are referring to a personal identity that sinks deep into the soil of a place. Local museums often serve to distill the identity of the community with which people identify, and whether they do it well or badly will affect attitudes toward the locale in question. (Kyvig 2007) Museums can act as keepers of local history and do have an impact on the community’s morale and understanding of itself. Take, for instance, how historic homes on the New England coast have evolved their narratives over the last century. Levin notes that many of these homes were opened up by their wealthy inhabitants who “considered themselves ‘true’ Americans” with direct ties to colonial America. These homes focused much more heavily on an upper-class narrative. However, “no mention is made of the injustices that occurred during this period” in favor of a nostalgia for a bygone era. Most notably, Black Americans were depicted as servants rather than as slaves and tour scripts “in the 1930s…made ‘no reference to the fact that half of eighteenth-century Williamsburg’s population had been black slaves.’” By the late 20th century, stories of slaves and “common lives” were introduced to visitors to provide a more holistic view of life in Colonial Williamsburg. This shift illustrated a change in how the museums balanced the 3 expectations and desires of their communities and the history of the homes as museums (Levin 2007). Describing museums solely as members of their communities ignores one other crucial role museums serve; they can often act as mediators between groups that are at odds with each other.