How social media users experience museum posting on social issues

ABSTRACT

In summer 2020, many museums posted on their social media accounts statements of solidarity with the anti-racism and Black Lives Matter protests spread out in the USA and worldwide, despite their overall reluctance to engage in debates on contemporary social issues. To provide insights into how social media users stand toward museum posting on social issues, this paper presents findings from a study conducted in summer 2020, for MoMA’s official social media accounts, and museums in general. Employing surveys, online interviews, and an analysis of users’ comments, this study reveals what people think, feel, and how they respond toward MoMA’s approach to engage on social media with contemporary events, standing against racism, abuse, violence, and injustice. It also comments on the direction that museums could follow to tackle social issues through their social media accounts and proposes a methodology to assess how social media posts are being received by users.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum
• social media
• MoMA museum of modern art
• museum activism
• social issues
• social justice

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of my successfully defended PhD dissertation (entitled "Understanding Museum Social Media Experiences") submitted to the Open University of Cyprus. I am grateful to all the people who participated in this research for their time, support, contribution, and enlightenment to the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Disclaimer

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

1 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=ymsi20 (last accessed on August 22, 2023).

2 When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he formed a new parent company, X Corp., for the transaction and laid the groundwork for the name change. In July 2023, the tech billionaire rebranded Twitter as X (Conger, 2023).

3 The deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 over the city’s plan to remove a statue of Lee made the removal of Confederate statues across the United States a key element of Black Lives Matter (Fallism and Restitution: Removing Racist Statues and Returning Looted Art Objects, 2020; Ortiz & Diaz, 2020).

4 https://www.instagram.com/p/CA3c1-vDIxE/ (posted on May 31, 2020).

5 https://www.instagram.com/p/CA6xVfqFMEU/ (posted on June 2, 2020).

6 https://www.facebook.com/MuseumofModernArt/photos/10159377774512281 (posted on June 2, 2020).

7 https://twitter.com/MuseumModernArt/status/1267665390588608513 (posted on June 2, 2020).

8 https://twitter.com/adriannerussell/status/1267533019541319681 (posted on June 1, 2020).

9 The first post (https://www.instagram.com/p/CA6xVfqFMEU/) included a blank black square endorsing the #BlackOutTuesday campaign, and the second post (https://www.instagram.com/p/CBBAf28FI8p/) had also a black square directing to a list of organizations that fight racism and support equality compiled by the MoMA (see https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/335) (last accessed on February 15, 2022).

10 MoMA’s post on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MuseumofModernArt/photos/a.73715257280/10159377774512281/?type=3 (posted on June 2, 2020).

11 #BlackOutTuesday: The Art World Posts Black Squares on Social Media to Show Support (June 3, 2020): https://en.thevalue.com/articles/blackouttuesday-george-floyd-art-industry-museum-auction-house (last accessed on February 15, 2022).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sophia Bakogianni

Dr Sophia Bakogianni works as an archaeologist – art historian at the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens. She holds a PhD in Social Information Systems from the Open University of Cyprus. Her research concerns what people want from their interaction with museums on social media. She also looks at users’ experiences on digital applications for museums and cultural organizations. She has worked as a research associate in many EU-funded research projects. Her personal website can be accessed here: https://sophiabakogianni.net/.