This article explores how the British Museum and the National Museum of Australia tailor their digital cultural politics, and how this corresponds to their management of online collections and presence on social media. The article applies textual analysis to examine how the two museums discursively frame their policies; interface analysis to demonstrate how they organise their online collections; and platform analysis to scrutinise their communication on Instagram. Findings indicate that the museums’ policies align with writings on democratic, participative, and user-generated digital museum communication. In practice, however, their design of digital collections and use of Instagram does not reflect their digital cultural politics as policy. There is therefore a disconnect between their policies and practices. This disconnect does not indicate that their digital collections and presence on social media are poorly designed and executed, but rather that the democratic, engaging, user-driven and participatory discourses of new museology are overstated.
AmooreL (2020) Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others. Durham, NC: Durham University Press.
2.
AndersonG (ed.) (2004) Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
3.
BennettT (1995) The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: Routledge.
4.
British Museum (n.d.a) Towards 2020: TheBritish Museum’s Strategy.London: British Museum.
5.
British Museum (n.d.b) Watchman, what of the night? Available at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1928-0710-1 (accessed 27 October 2021).
British Museum (n.d.d) Instagram profile.Available at: https://www.instagram.com/britishmuseum/ (accessed 16 December 2020).
8.
British Museum (2014) Building Development Framework: Towards the Future.London: British Museum.
9.
British Museum (2018) Review 2017–18.London: British Museum.
10.
British Museum (2020) Reaching Out: Review 2019/20.London: British Museum.
11.
British Museum (2021) Working with the World: Review 2020/21.London: British Museum.
12.
BrunsA (2008) Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang.
13.
CastellsM (2009) Communication Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
14.
CrawfordK (2009) Following you: disciplines of listening in social media. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies23(4): 525–535.
15.
CunninghamSCraigD (2019) Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. New York: New York University Press.
16.
DrotnerKDziekanVParryRet al. (eds) (2019) The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication. London: Routledge.
17.
DrotnerKSchrøderKC (eds) (2013) Museum Communication and Social Media: The Connected Museum. New York: Routledge.
18.
FoucaultM (2002a) Governmentality. In: FaubionJ (ed.) Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, vol 3. London: Penguin Books, pp. 201–222.
19.
FoucaultM (2002b) The Archaeology of Knowledge. Oxford: Routledge.
20.
FuchsC (2014) Social Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage.
21.
GauntlettD (2011) Making is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, from DIY and Knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge: Polity Press.
22.
HallS (1997) The work of representation. In: HallS (ed.) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage, pp. 13–74.
23.
Hooper-GreenhillE (2000) Changing values in the art museum: Rethinking communication and learning. International Journal of Heritage Studies6(1): 9–31.
24.
JenkinsH (2006) Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York University Press.
25.
KellyL (2013) The connected museum in the world of social media. In: DrotnerKSchrøderKC (eds) Museum Communication and Social Media: The Connected Museum. New York: Routledge, pp. 54–71.
26.
KiddJ (2011) Enacting engagement online: Framing social media use for the museum. Information, Technology & People24(1): 64–77.
27.
KiddJ (2014) Museums in the New Mediascape: Transmedia, Participation, Ethics. Farnham: Ashgate.
28.
LeadbeaterC (2000) Living on Thin Air. London: Penguin.
29.
LightBBagnallGCrawfordGet al. (2018a) The material role of digital media in connecting with, within and beyond museums. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies24(4): 407–423.
30.
LightBBurgessJDuguayS (2018b) The walkthrough method: An approach to the study of apps. New Media & Society20(2): 881–900.
31.
MarstineJ (2006) Introduction. In: MarstineJ (ed.) New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 1–36.
National Museum of Australia (n.d.b) Defining moments in Australian history. Available at:http://collectionsearch.nma.gov.au/set/3371 (accessed 11 December 2020).
National Museum of Australia (2021a) Corporate Plan: 2021–2022. Canberra: NMA.
40.
National Museum of Australia (2021b) 20–21 Annual ReportCanberra: NMA.
41.
ParryR (2007) Recoding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change. London: Routledge.
42.
PavementP (2019) The museum as media producer: Innovation before the digital age. In: DrotnerKDziekanVParryRSchrøderK (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication. London: Routledge, pp. 31–46.
43.
PoellTNieborgDvan DijckJ (2019) Platformisation. Internet Policy Review: Journal of Internet Regulation8(4): 1–13.
44.
RobergeJSeyfertR (2016) What are algorithmic cultures? In: SeyfertRRobergeJ (eds) Algorithmic Cultures: Essays on Meaning, Performance and New Technologies. New York: Routledge, pp. 1–25.
45.
RussoA (2012) The rise of the ‘media museum’: Creating interactive cultural experiences through social media. In: GiaccardiE (ed.) Heritage and Social Media: Understanding Heritage in a Participatory Culture. London: Routledge, pp. 145–157.
46.
SimonN (2010) The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz, CA: Museum.
47.
SrinivasanRBoastRFurnerJet al. (2009) Digital museums and diverse cultural knowledges: Moving past the traditional catalog. The Information Society25: 265–278.
48.
TerranovaT (2013) Free labor. In: ScholzT (eds) Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory. New York: Routledge, 33–57.
49.
Van DijckJ (2013) The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
50.
Van DijckJPoellT (2013) Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication1(1): 2–14.
51.
Van DijckJPoellTde WaalM (2018) The Platform Society: Public Values in a Connected World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
52.
Van DoornN (2017) Platform labor: On the gendered and racialized exploitation of low-income service work in the ‘on-demand’ economy. Information, Communication & Society20(6): 898–914.
53.
VergoP (1989) Introduction. In: VergoP (ed.) The New Museology. London: Reaktion Books, pp. 1–5.
