Digital Heritage

Following Tuesday’s discussions on museums, social software and YouTube and related to both Lena’s points about ’style of communication’ and Kyoko’s last question in her post, here is an interesting post and video by Becky, a student of the Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State University (you may remember the ‘Web 2.0…The machine is Us/ing us‘ by Prof. Michael Wesch of the same group)

‘The Internet has a face’
by Becky @ Digital Ethnography, Kansas State University.

With YouTube, a text world of interaction and networking is now given face and a persona. Not only for entertainment, the YouTube website is a platform for communication not previously used by the average web surfer before its birth in early 2005. Since then, this website has hosted not just coca cola and mentos experiments, but a network of vloggers who have meaningful interactions beyond the limits of text. Users are now seeing and subscribing to one another, attaching video responses along the way which embrace comedy and compassion, as well as criticism and conversation. Before, we were reliant upon what the user has expressed through words, however, when one can read beyond words through visuals, the communication seems to become more “human and personal.” If there was a fear that the internet was making society antisocial, vlogging would seek to prove otherwise.

With that said, the following video was created to explore the content and purpose of vlogs, as well as the networking and interconnectivity as users respond and reach out to eachother within and beyond the YouTube website. Many of the clips were found through a simple search for vlogs, resulting in a better understanding of the use of such a medium. Enjoy!

Yesterday was the 10th session of the course. Time flies! Our class this week discussed the role of the social software in the museum and surrounding issues.

Social software, such as blogs and podcasts, is a new way to approach current visitors as well as potential visitors of museums, although there are many issues to be considered. The article of Von Appen K. et al. provided us with food for thought on this topic. People feel close and become more engaged to museums by participating in the web based community of museum. However, there still are limitations.

According to the survey of Forrester Research, 52% of computer users do not even browse the blog, and people who actually create own blog and comment on other blogs are 32%. So, in fact, not a large portion of users participate in such web communities, especially, in the museum context, a barrier seems higher than other types of blog. We also focused on the issue of censorship and moderation.

Through inviting user-generated contents, museums can also offer the opportunity for online debates about controversial issues. However, because of the nature of web-based communities, a museum blog could be exposed to language abuse. So, a certain degree of moderation would be required, although it may sometime be challenging to decide on what to moderate or not.

Maculan’s post “Museum and social software”　also made us think about new styles of communication that would help to reach to new audiences. In the political world, some politicians have started to use social software such as You-Tube to approach new audiences. Should museums to the same thing? If so, then, in what way?

I am delighted to welcome this post by Lena Maculan, PhD Student at the Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. In her PhD research, Lena has been studying various types of web-based technologies and the notion of user-generated content in order to explore new ways in the production and presentation of knowledge in museums.

I would like to thank her for taking the time to write this thought-provoking post on ‘Museums and Social Software’, which I am sure will stimulate much discussion both in the blog and in class next week (week 10).

Lena has kindly accepted to follow this post for any comments and will respond to questions/remarks.

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Museums and social software
by Lena Maculan
mm179[at]leicester.ac.uk

Some critics argue that ‘older’ types of online forums also count as social software; most, however, refer with this term to more recent services such as podcasts, weblogs, wikis, folksonomy and social tagging.

It seems that in a museum context, there is one big question that goes with all of those applications and services:

Are museums employing social software for the sake of it, or are they really allowing users a new type of engagement with cultural content online?

Hooper-Greenhill has argued that changes in museum practice are not limited to the way how content is delivered to audiences. Change has also taken place in the manner or style of communication.

In the context of museums’ use of social software, the question I want to ask is: Are museums exploring new styles of communicating cultural content? Or, are they transferring traditional museum style content onto a new medium?

Let’s look at an example: The recent Velazquez exhibition at the National Gallery was featured in their podcast. The Sunday Times Culture has also published a podcast on the same show. (You can find it on YouTube)

Comparing the two shows that, yes, the NG is exploring new ways of delivering content to audiences – and that’s great! And even if Antenna Audio’s moderator is reading out a script, instead of speaking freely, the programme clearly aims to create a light-hearted atmosphere, which is far removed from the traditional scholarly tone of the museum. So, in much generalized terms, one could say that the NG’s podcast has produced something which is very different to conventional museum publications.

Yet, upon a closer look, it seems that the subjects they address and the manner of talking about them is very much old school. A listener to this programme, who is not so familiar with museums in general and old master paintings in particular, would be left quite confused what this show is about.

Januszack, in the Sunday Times’ programme in comparison is a lot more at ease, as he walks around the gallery whilst talking about the works in very passionate terms. His style of talking is very engaging, and, at the same time he manages to transport his message very clearly: Whether you are an art expert or not, he tells you what the show is about, what you can expect, and why you should go and see it.

Museums are just coming to grips with podcasting and related Web 2.0 applications. Maybe we should therefore not be too harsh with critique. However, it seems fair to say that if museums want to use podcasting or indeed any other type of social software, the question is not only about how social software offers new ways of delivering content, but more importantly in what kind of style one should communicate it – especially if museums want to reach for new audiences.