Museer, naturvidenskab og sociale medier: muligheder og udfordringer

This thesis examines the options and obstacles connected to natural science museums’ use of social media. Drawing together perspectives from learning theory, media theory and museology, and by combining media ethnographic studies with design-based research, the research project explores the dynamics that exist between users and museums when social media is involved, and thus identify how users’ interaction and reflection processes relate to the content and communication purposes intended by the museum.

The complex, dynamic and interdisciplinary field of study is approached using a holistic research design that focuses on two different applications of social media in the museum context: one that studies museum and user communication on Facebook, and one that studies museum and learner communication when social media is deployed for learning in the museum. In empirical terms, the project co-designs and analyses five new digital learning resources for science learning in three museums: the National History Museum of Denmark, The Blue Planet − National Aquarium Denmark and the natural history museum Naturama. Meanwhile, Facebook communication is studied by including a wider selection of Danish museums.

The thesis consists of four chapters. In the first chapter, the dynamic field of study is outlined and the research position introduced; in the second, the research project’s interdisciplinary approach across learning theory, media theory and museology is elaborated, while the third chapter establishes the dissertation’s research design and its methodological and analytical consequences. The fourth chapter summarises the research project’s overall contribution to research in learning and social media in museum contexts. The dissertation consists of three research articles and a conference article.

In the first article, a range of Danish museums’ social media communication is explored over the course of one month. It is argued that while research shows museums generally have taken on social media communication using monologic communication approaches, transformations in museums’ communication is shifting this. The study finds that many museums deliver precisely the opposite mode of communication on Facebook, where they initiate a broad range of dialogic genres featuring intense publication activities and high rates of response. The article documents that many museums on a general level have embraced the idea of dialogic communication on social media – and know how to engage users professionally and with success – while it leaves open questions as to the content, structure and value of this dialogue.

The second article also focuses on museums’ social media communication on Facebook. Here it explores how particular modes of communication and discursive genres serve to generate mutual online positionings. Based on in-depth analyses of Facebook communication over three months at nine Danish museums, and applying theories and methods from discourse analysis, the article examines how processes of co-construction are established, upheld, modified and developed. It is argued that museums and audiences alike largely co-construct one another along familiar lines of institutional authority, and that more dialogic modes of interaction mainly occur when museums harness audience knowledge resources.

The focus of the third article is directed towards museums’ use of social media for learning in the museums. From a user perspective, social media resources on iPads are examined across involvement in three projects, with analysis based on theory of interaction design and the synergetic relationships between artefacts, users and contexts. A number of inconsistencies are identified between the users’ prior knowledge and experience of digital media, expectations of the museum experience and the museums’ didactic choices.

Finally, the fourth article advances the third article’s introduction and focuses on young people’s use of iPads and social media resources across all five learning projects. The article uses the concept of media and information literacy as an analytical framework, and relates young learners’ direct use and subsequent reflections to museums’ didactic framing. A pattern of inconsistencies is identified, and it is argued that museums’ decisions to innovate their approaches to learning paradoxically conflict with many young learners’ more traditional ideas about museums and learning.

In summary, three overall perspectives and contributions are summarised. First, in relation to the empirical contribution, the project documents that museums’ communication via social media is constantly marked by a number of crucial differences between users actual engagements and expectations and the museums’ intentions. In relation to theoretical contributions, the project adds new perspectives and knowledge of social media’s potential to transform museums’ institutional authority. Meanwhile, in terms of methodological contributions, the research project provides an example of how a holistic and interdisciplinary research design can help address, and add new perspectives and understanding of, the complex and dynamic problem field created when focusing on museums and users’ engagement with social media.