Abstract
Responding to the growing interest in the role of digital platforms in traditional museum organisations, this project explores digital spaces such as social media platforms where people exchange dialogue about objects in ways that replicate the practices that take place within museums. This paper focuses on Facebook groups where people coalesce to research, collect, conserve, interpret, and exhibit tangible and intangible heritage. I argue that these spaces as vital components of a broader cultural system of practices that extend beyond official museum walls. This project utilises digital ethnographic observation of Facebook vintage clothing and accessory groups supported by semi-structured interviews to explore individual and group heritage object collection and management practices. Through this research, it becomes possible to understand these online Facebook groups as spaces that allow for the negotiation of new forms of meaning-making and redefine our understanding of the museum as more than just a place to visit but rather as a broader set of cultural practices that occur as part of many people’s everyday activities. This research challenges us to rethink the long-held museum pedagogy that defines the museum as a place and raises questions about the role of the museum as an institution in an increasingly digital world. By highlighting the role of unofficial digital spaces as part of a system of museum-like cultural practice, it becomes possible to identify museum-ing as a means to foster the diversity, sustainability, education, enjoyment, reflection, knowledge sharing and belonging imagined in the ICOM 2023 definition of a Museum.
Presenters
Lisa EnrightPhD Candidate / Casual Academic, Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, University of Queensland, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Museum Practice, Social Media, Cultural Theory, Collections, Digital Practices
