Framing digital identities through social media in museums

Abstract

Drawing on evidence from literature in branding, marketing, digital media, and communications, this article finds that museums’ branding strategies are framed within marketing disciplines and therefore create simplistic dichotomies between “internal” and “external” actors, as well as between “physical” and “digital” spaces. This marketing frame inevitably led museums to create their identities by placing higher value on their physical attributes (collection and building) as well as to the stakeholders (curators and visitors) who either managed or engaged with these physical attributes. Therefore, when museums began using social media, their approach was to instrumentalise these platforms as communication tools and to reflect the identity they had built “offline” through marketing or broadcasting-style online posts. This approach to social media is limiting because it does not acknowledge the role of the platform and that of the user within these online spaces. Based on a systematic review of literature, this article argues the need for a different approach to museums’ digital identities by proposing an approach based on Actor-Network theory and a new media frame. In doing so, it addresses the need for an integrated approach that connects mission and social practices to create value for online audiences and that is open to the active participation of networked users.