There is a prevalent idea in the UK museum sector that putting content online makes it more accessible. The perception that organisations are able to reach younger and more diverse audiences online is a leading motivation of digital adoption (Noehrer et al. 2021; Nesta 2017). When social media first emerged, its seemingly democratised style of peer-to-peer communication was quickly espoused as a way to encourage a dialogue with the public (Shirky 2008; Jenkins 2009; Lievrouw 2010). These platforms on which anyone can post – given internet connectivity and the ability to navigate digital interfaces – potentially enable voices from marginalised communities to be involved in public discussion (Fransen-Taylor and Narayan 2018, 310). It is unsurprising then, that the increasing adoption of social media amongst museums over the past decade has occurred in tandem with a shift towards more participatory practices in the sector.
Yet despite the vast majority of museums in the UK now having active social media accounts, the Audience Agency’s 18-month-long survey found that their online audiences were no more diverse than their on-site counterparts (The Audience Agency 2021; Charlesworth et al. 2023; Larkin, Ballatore, and Mityurova 2023). Despite over 20% of museums trying to use social media to reach younger audiences, over half of museums online visitors were over the age of 55 (Walmsley et al. 2022; Nesta 2017). In addition, most online visitors already regularly engaged with museums in person (The Audience Agency 2021). Our research has highlighted that museums’ online audiences remain very small; despite a large increase in posting to social media by UK museums during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020, there was no significant rise in online audiences (Charlesworth et al. 2023). Despite the long-held hopes of museum professionals and academics, it appears the radical potential of social media has not yet been realised.
Our investigation over the past year aimed to address this issue, asking how museums can better reach more diverse audiences and cultivate a dialogue with their visitors. To highlight and understand trends in the sector, we adopted a multidisciplinary approach at three different scales. Firstly, we produced an overview of the sector’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic through an quantitative analysis of the website, Twitter and Facebook data of over 4,000 museums – representing a comprehensive list of accredited and unaccredited museums across the UK (Larkin, Ballatore, and Mityurova 2023). This was run alongside a complementary study of 315 museums’ presence online, which included levels of engagement and posting across a further three social media platforms (Charlesworth et al. 2023). These findings were then used to identify museums that were representative of wider trends, and our final study consisted of a series of 20 follow-up interviews with the people running the social media accounts of these chosen museums. By combining data-led research with supplementary interviews, we both able to identify trends in the sector and also explain why they are occurring.
To showcase our findings, our paper uses two small regional museums to illustrate the barriers to building online audiences and highlight the diverse practices within the sector.
We have found that simply being online is not enough to reach new visitors. There is a significant discrepancy between the social media platforms museums adopt, and the platforms their target audiences are using – an issue that is exacerbated by the fact that video-sharing platforms like Snapchat and TikTok demand significantly more resources than text-based platforms. As one of our participants put it:
You need such a big team to do these things successfully, you really need to be doing it every day, twice a day, to get it done properly. So yeah, we can’t do that at all.
It is unsurprising then that the largest museums with the most resources have the largest online audiences (Charlesworth et al. 2023). With famous collections, innovative digital projects, and sophisticated digital strategies, they dominate discussions in the sector and academia (Candlin et al. 2019). Over the course of the pandemic, ‘superstar’ organisations, such as the British Museum and the Louvre, saw threefold increases in visitors to their websites during the pandemic (UNESCO 2020, 15). The Audience Agency found geographically diverse audiences were using the influx of digital resources to virtually ‘visit’ distant museums, allowing them to engage with collections that were further away (The Audience Agency 2021). Yet, the difficulty in conducting surveys or gathering data across so many institutions means that the international audiences of smaller and regional museums have yet to be studied.
By focusing on two small and regional museums in the UK and their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we aim to highlight their innovative practices and present an alternative model of successful online participation to that of the largest and well-resourced museums. These two examples come from a group of museums – either entirely volunteer run, or with a few employees – that saw persistent and highly engaged international audiences, indicating a significant level of international digital tourism to small regional museums in the UK during 2020. These unexpected levels of online engagement were seen from historic diaspora communities, and our interviewees highlighted the Highland clearances in Scotland, forced deportation to Australia, and Irish economic migration, as all linked to their larger than average international audiences. By looking in-depth at their online offering, this paper aims to situate their success within the broader sector and highlight the type of digital resources that were open dialogues about migration across international boundaries.
Unfortunately, none of these institutions have maintained their online audiences since their physical sites have reopened. The small museums which saw this international influx during the pandemic, were some of the most financially precarious institutions in our sample, relying heavily on volunteers and miniscule budgets. Regularly threatened by funding cuts, we found that their digital initiatives were often the first to be scrapped. Over half of the organisations we interviewed relied on unpaid team members – including interns and work experience students – to manage their online presence. The number of interns, volunteers, and staff on short-term contracts presents an ongoing barrier to digital development. Individuals who develop specialist digital skills are frequently forced to leave their roles once their contract ends, or search for better-paid work; an issue that disproportionately affects women, and workers from ethnically diverse backgrounds (Walmsley et al. 2022). A lack of documentation means that when these staff leave, much of their contribution is often lost. Old audience figures from social media and websites are not routinely saved or reported, and in more than one interview, it transpired that the passwords for social media accounts had been misplaced during hand-over periods, leading to platforms being abandoned entirely.
In the face of financial pressure and with less staff available as their physical sites have reopened, most museums now reducing the amount they’re posting online (Larkin, Ballatore, and Mityurova 2023). Our interviewees highlight that there are simply not enough resources to justify using staff time on an activity that does not directly contribute to ticket sales; the online audiences that these small museums have reached have not been monetised or accounted for in the grant reporting structure in the UK. Therefore, we aim to draw together and document a rapidly vanishing – but highly successful – approach to audience engagement, that encourage an open dialogue with international audiences about a difficult but shared history.