Museums, COVID‐19 and the pivot to social media

Abstract

This paper examines social media activity by UK museums during the COVID‐19 pandemic. There is a general perception that as museums closed their doors for extended periods, their digital presence increased to maintain connections with their audiences. However, much of the research conducted in this area is based on small‐scale studies and examples of best practice from large, well‐resourced museums. By contrast, this study utilizes a comprehensive database of over 3300 active UK museums to understand the use of Facebook and Twitter across the sector. Specifically, the paper examines the frequency with which museums posted to these digital platforms as they attempted to engage with their audiences. Our findings indicate that there was no substantial increase in social media use and activity across the UK museum sector during the COVID‐19 pandemic. This research has implications for museologists studying the impact of the pandemic on museums' digital activity, for museum social media professionals, and policymakers responsible for museum digital transformation strategies.

Museums and the Post-Digital: Revisiting Challenges in the Digital Transformation of Museums

“…It has been argued that organisational culture can be an important inhibitor of digital development [48]. These challenges have been noted in the literature since the early 2000s, when museums considered "new technologies" as expensive and high-risk because of the technical issues of maintenance, costs, and training [15,48,49,64,65]. As also shown by the relevant literature and surveys [9,[12][13][14], the challenges vary for different sizes of museums, as larger museums tend to have more resources to integrate digital applications.…”

“…Museums responded quickly to the dire situation brought by the pandemic by using different digital media and formats (such as websites and social media)-and not groundbreaking technologies-to deliver their services and reach their audiences [48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. Beyond artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data, digital transformation is connected to social change brought, largely, by social media, whereby the creation and consumption of meaning have become more open and blurred.…”