Paper short abstract:

There is a gap between participatory museum work and its extension into the online realm. This paper considers processes of 'democratisation' in museums and on social media to examine the tensions that hinder participation by reinstating project boundaries across the museum’s different spaces.

Paper long abstract:

Participation has become an increasingly important element of museum work (Simon 2010), yet associated practices and outcomes are usually bound within specific projects, and not usually part of these projects from beginning to end. Participatory practices aim to ‘democratise’ museum work, whilst at the same time social media are perceived as tools for museums to easily and passively reach that same goal. Despite the alignment in redistributing power across different processes, the incorporation of participatory practices has been especially challenging within the context of museum social media work. Museums are frequently critiqued for using social media primarily for ‘marketing’ and ‘broadcasting’ rather than as part and parcel to participation and related social goals (Iwasaki 2017; Kidd 2011). How is participation conceptualised and taking place across museum work? And in what ways are the approaches and content limited to the designated ‘spaces’? This paper reveals the gap between participatory work and its extension into social media spaces, and considers the underpinning factors that shape the potential of exhibiting and collecting practices both in the museum’s physical spaces as well as online. The analysis of exemplary projects in Germany and the UK surfaces defining tensions between the translation of participatory practices across mediums which can reinstate project boundaries, prohibiting the incorporation of such practices in other forms of museum work. The future of participation in museums relies on breaking boundaries; it requires a different understanding of the role of social media and a stronger connection between what happens online and on site.