Museums in the age of platform giants: Disconnected policies and practices

Abstract

This article explores how the British Museum and the National Museum of Australia tailor their digital cultural politics, and how this corresponds to their management of online collections and presence on social media. The article applies textual analysis to examine how the two museums discursively frame their policies; interface analysis to demonstrate how they organise their online collections; and platform analysis to scrutinise their communication on Instagram. Findings indicate that the museums’ policies align with writings on democratic, participative, and user-generated digital museum communication. In practice, however, their design of digital collections and use of Instagram does not reflect their digital cultural politics as policy. There is therefore a disconnect between their policies and practices. This disconnect does not indicate that their digital collections and presence on social media are poorly designed and executed, but rather that the democratic, engaging, user-driven and participatory discourses of new museology are overstated.