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Accepted Paper:
Paper Short Abstract:
Guestbook entries are complicated inscriptions, which embody participatory practices pursued publicly by visitors onsite and online. The paper offers a hybrid approach, combining visitor-ethnography, media-ethnography, and writing-ethnography for arriving at a holistic yet nuanced understanding.
Paper Abstract:
This paper reflects on two decades of ethnographic studies of guestbook entries in museums and in online/digital platforms (Google Maps Review and TripAdvisor). For this purpose, I highlight the interrelations between material-cum-technological affordances for writing in museum guestbooks and the situated nature of inscribed texts. I suggest that this conceptualization may help promote the type of ethnography which is sensitive to both the environment and the writing practices: offline and online. Because visitors are those who produce guestbook entries, ethnography needs to be sensitive and informed conceptually regarding visiting practices (over and above writing guestbook entries), and approach the interaction with the guestbook as an integral part of the “ritual of the museums visit” (Noy, 2020, p. 10). Furthermore, if guestbooks are viewed as media, media ethnography needs to address practices and preferences of media use and media ideology (held both by the museums and by their users). This is beneficial for documenting cases where, for instance, visitors play different tole in producing entries, such as when one family/group member authors a text while another is actually inscribing. Lastly, exploring offline and online ethnographies of visitors’/users’ entries, I hope to advance a comparative dimension in observing similarities and differences between these studies of newer and older media (Alacovska, 2016).
Alacovska, A. (2016). Rethinking media genres in the history of user-generated content in 19th-century travel guidebooks. Media, Culture & Society, 39(5), 666-679.
Noy, C. (2020). Gestures of closure: A small stories approach to museumgoers' texts. Text & Talk, 40(6), 733-753.
Guestbook writing and other visitor/guest verbatim: how do we work with (un)written sources like these?
Session 1