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Uses of Social Media Within the British Museum and Museum Sector See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325285000 Uses of social media within the British Museum and museum sector Preprint · January 2012 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.35064.96003 CITATION READS 1 3,184 1 author: Daniel Pett University of Cambridge 44 PUBLICATIONS 114 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: CASPAR: Centre for Audio-Visual Study and Practice in Archaeology conference papers View project MicroPasts View project All content following this page was uploaded by Daniel Pett on 22 May 2018. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Uses of social media within the British Museum and museum sector Pett, D.E.J. (ICT Adviser: The British Museum & Portable Antiquities Scheme) Use social media to help deliver specific marketing, learning and participation goals – don’t do it for the sake of it. (Imagemakers 2011: 8) Social media can be defined in many ways, but this paper will focus primarily upon platforms that allow community members to engage with each other by creating profiles and online content (see the oft cited Kaplan & Haenlein 2010 and Atkinson 2011) or ‘social capital’ (Ellison et al. 2007). This paper will demonstrate how social media can be used and implemented within the museum sector for marketing (with specific reference to the authors’ institution for clarity), for a participatory multi-vocal dialogue, for creating a strong online brand and for creating a research presence. It will also consider their relative merits of pertinent case studies and suggest how others could emulate and innovate within the archaeological and museum sectors (and complementing the perspectives provided by many other contributions to this volume). 1. Social media: What is it? The use of social media in the digital arena now permeates our life with many of us participating via a variety of methods and devices (the mobile device now becoming especially ubiquitous and presenting its own particular challenges). Individuals and institutions thereby have taken on a wide variety of overlapping and/or conflicting identities on each. This dialogue mechanism allows for a multi-vocal engagement between institutions and consumers, via community engagement and democratised access to information. These services can range from high profile platforms (for example Facebook and Twitter) to meet-up groups, forums and knowledge banks and online games which will be discussed below. Social media tools are just one of the many methods used within the ‘marketing mix’ to engage with museum, arts, cultural and archaeological audiences; but for the purposes of this paper, it will be the only medium discussed. Digital media now provide a way to interact and engage in dialogue with a new audience, for example a younger or worldwide audience could now be courted by a local museum, where previously this may have been beyond their means. It is a mechanism for broadcasting cultural propaganda, to influence target audiences and create new relationships. However these channels of communication are two-way and not just unidirectional broadcasting mechanisms (as many marketing tools are traditionally). Social media are ultimately about engagement, dialogue and the creation of social capital. They are extensions of the news generated in the traditional hard copy, allowing anyone to break stories, become a valued influence and create a wider network of interested people. Marketing via social media has thus expanded into a new realm: that of community-building and direct interaction and all of this can be achieved relatively cheaply and with low numbers of dedicated personnel. The recent publication of national reports on digital markets in various sectors of UK life demonstrates the importance of taking this market seriously. For example, the Arts Council England, MLA and Arts & Business (ACE et al. from here on) research document “Digital audiences: engagement with arts and culture online” (2010:4,18) suggests that 53% of the online population (currently 18 million fixed broadband lines exist at the end of 2010 (Ofcom 2011)) have used the Internet to engage with arts and culture in the past 12 months (with an increase to 62% for those in the 16 - 34 year old age bracket). The report identifies five main online interaction categories: 1. Access 2. Learn 3. Experience 4. Share 1 5. Create. These 5 factors indicate the importance of museums and cultural institutions being active on social media platforms and making them a key marketing channel. These factors also nicely align with the ‘4 pillars of enterprise’ that Rangaswami1 discusses (figure 1). ACE report criteria Rangaswami’s pillars of Enterprise Access Search Share Syndication Experience | Learn | Share Fulfilment Create | Share Conversation Figure 1: Synergy between Rangaswami’s ‘4 pillars of enterprise’ and the ACE criteria. The report seeks to demonstrates that Internet users are creative and want to engage with the online resource that they are interacting with (however if the 90-9-1 (also known as ‘participation inequality’) rule is applied, then the potential creative audience is relatively small - circa 10%, the tip of the pyramid, see Nielsen 2006, Wallis 2010:27.) Another finding from the ACE et al. report is that: “Those engaged in arts and culture online are also engaged on arts and culture offline. There is great potential for cross-promoting and cross-fertilising audiences” (Ibid: 17) Therefore, this produces an opportunity for the conversion of online relationships into offline and on-site ones with the knock-on potential for income generation. This opportunity will be returned to below, but it is worth saying now that limitations within the cultural sector (physical resources, knowledge, personnel and time) can prevent full exploitation of the potential of these platforms and leads to out sourcing for implementation. Institutions need to choose carefully which aspects of such digital media to which to devote their efforts if they are to achieve a positive return on their investment (however such a return is defined). Simplistically, institutions will migrate towards platforms with the largest audience share. However, is an institution’s engagement with social media simply pandering to a niche market? The Office for National Statistics (2011) states that there are 62.26 million people in the UK2, but are just 100,000 people interested in the British Museum’s social media output? Is the marketing output really not reaching the correct audience? Is the investment worthwhile? Are people interested in culture? Should you focus on the marketing practices, or more on executing social media tools effectively? 2. Platforms for engagement: choice abounds In the last few years, an explosion of social media platforms has led to a huge array of options for anyone wishing to create an online persona, whether the latter is an ‘avatar’ (i.e. an incarnation of a person as they perceive themselves or wish to be perceived by others, for example someone’s Wii Mii3 avatar) - or as an accurate representation of the user and generate their own content. Social media is about creating references to self: or “Me media” as Cassidy (2006) styles it. This projected persona can heavily influence the interactions and engagements that users have with one another and with various services (for example see Tringham and Morgan’s Second Life recreation of Çatalhöyük, Morgan 2009: 479-481 or DiMicco & Millen 2007’s work on identity projection and interaction via Facebook’s). Each social media platform attempts to produce a unique selling point (USP), whether this involves an emphasis on geographic (Location Based Service - LBS), audio 1 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/category/four-pillars-of-enterprise-application-architecture/ 2 Population figures were obtained from http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-estimate/population-estimates-for-uk-- england-and-wales--scotland-and-northern-ireland/mid-2010-population-estimates/rft---mid-2010-population- estimates.zip accessed September 6 2011 3 For more details on the concept of Nintendo Wii Mii avatars see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mii accessed September 27 2011 2 visual (for example photo and video sharing), prose based (blogs) or micro update services. A limited selection of the wide range of platforms available for social media participation is displayed in figure 2. Social media use has been prevalent for a long time within the archaeological and museum sectors. For example within the form of mailing lists and chat forums (UK examples are BRITARCH4 and the MCG5 hosted on JISCMAIL servers). Social media and the Internet allow everyone to have a voice (Kilbitsch 2007) and an opinion on any subject that they choose. Breen (2010:36) states things as follows for archaeology, but the comments are also relevant for museums: “The web has opened up publishing to everyone, and that may yet save Irish archaeology from a dispiriting trend. The recent boom in archaeology and the development of many national monuments with...admission charges have made the public more aware..but also seem to give many people the impression that actually going out and studying their local antiquities is ...best left to the experts....It is a relief therefore to see that a number of enthusiasts have started websites where they post photographs and descriptions of monuments they have visited...” Breen, in essence, has captured a more general trend of the web as it has moved
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