Abstract
...with the increasing spread of social media and mobile communication, the social networks of knowledge construction are becoming not only vastly bigger and quicker and less limited by space and time constraints than they have been before, but also more of a threat to established authorities. (Hofheinz 2011, 1426) This article considers the issues of archaeological authority, expertise and organisational reputation in the UK from an online perspective, and questions whether the participatory promise of social media technologies can, and should, challenge archaeological authority. It explores how these issues are approached and mediated online, the issues of digital literacy for audience reception, and the approaches used by archaeological organisations to address the challenges of undertaking digital public archaeology projects whilst maintaining archaeological rigour and the visible performance of expertise. It discusses how the concepts of archaeological authority and expertise are demonstrated and practised online, using data from my doctoral research, undertaken from 2011 to 2013. This article questions if the presence of websites dedicated to the promulgation of alternative archaeologies on the Internet can present challenges for the performance of archaeological expertise online, and how organisations monitor and respond to alternative archaeological interpretations and news stories.
Highlights
The debate on archaeological authority and the nature of public participation in both the production and consumption of culture can be summarised by two questions
Is traditional expertise obsolete in the era of participatory technologies? Secondly, how do professional archaeologists and archaeological organisations exercise their archaeological expertise in an online context? This article will examine the issues of authority, organisational reputation, ownership and trust within archaeological organisations in the UK, which relate to the practice of public archaeology through the use of digital technologies
I will argue that archaeological organisations in the UK have transferred their institutional authority to the digital realm successfully, and that there is little evidence that archaeologists are threatened by the existence of alternative voices online, or by the opportunities for sharing multiple perspectives on the past that are provided by participatory media
Summary
"...with the increasing spread of social media and mobile communication, the social networks of knowledge construction are becoming vastly bigger and quicker and less limited by space and time constraints than they have been before, and more of a threat to established authorities." (Hofheinz 2011, 1426). This article considers the issues of archaeological authority, expertise and organisational reputation in the UK from an online perspective, and questions whether the participatory promise of social media technologies can, and should, challenge archaeological authority It explores how these issues are approached and mediated online, the issues of digital literacy for audience reception, and the approaches used by archaeological organisations to address the challenges of undertaking digital public archaeology projects whilst maintaining archaeological rigour and the visible performance of expertise. It discusses how the concepts of archaeological authority and expertise are demonstrated and practised online, using data from my doctoral research, undertaken from 2011 to 2013.
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