This thesis examines the use of social media by museums aiming to establish collaborative relationships with the public. Social media platforms have been widely espoused as transformative in allowing diverse, new or previously excluded audiences to enter into egalitarian, participatory relationships with museums. This thesis deconstructs the concepts of participation and collaboration and identifies the various factors that constrain the extent to which social media enables participatory relationships between previously unequal actors. These factors include the historical disciplinary aims and cultural authority of museums, persistent social inequalities, and the motivations of social media followers. It elucidates crucial questions such as, are various publics enabled to participate on an equal level with each other and with museums? Who benefits from collaborative projects in general and which parties benefit from the use of social media in particular? What are the factors that limit the establishment of collaborative practice? And, conversely, what are the factors that define truly collaborative practice? This research examines museums' use of and discourses surrounding social media as well as social media followers' motivations for engaging with museums online. A large body of quantitative and qualitative data gained through in-depth web-based surveys is analysed, primarily using critical discourse analysis, and informed by other critical orientations including media archaeology and the sociology of expertise. The analysis indicates that museums consider social media to be a transformative, democratising technology. However, museums' acceptance of technologically determinist arguments significantly inhibits positive societal change and the extent to which collaborative relationships can be established with various publics. This research contributes significantly to the existing archaeological and museum studies literature by providing a theoretically and empirically informed critical analysis of the prevailing positive discourses surrounding social media and participation. It has important practical implications for museums in arguing that targeted, critically informed and ethically aware projects are necessary to achieve situations resembling 'collaboration'. It provides a significant body of data that will inform the formulation and continuation of collaborative projects in museums. Furthermore, it informs broader archaeological debates on involving various publics in archaeological practice. This thesis also demonstrates the importance and effectiveness of critical discourse analysis and related critical approaches for analysing large bodies of qualitative data.

Art museums still have an essential role, both for the art world and the wider society. This thesis deals mainly with their transformation and challenges they have to face in relation to contemporary society. It focuses on the development of museums, the transformation of values they embody and also on changes in normative expectations in conjunction with them. The paper also discusses the role of museums with increasing emphasis on their educational role, because this role could help museums to succeed in their current efforts to open to the wider audience. Today, these attempts to democratize represent crucial task of art museums. These efforts, however, depend on the concept of aesthetic taste which the paper also deals with. To be successful, it is desirable to view taste as a skill that can be cultivated through education. Since those who influence success in this field are museum professionals, this work deals also with their position within the museums and the art world and the strategies which are used by them. The fundamental shifts in art museums and their responses to the demands of the public occurred as a result of institutional critique that began in the 60's of last century. The new museology, critical curating and relational aesthetics can be included under this trend. As these...

This thesis is a study of pottery in the museum world. Throughout the study, questions along the lines of how, why and what we exhibit are brought up and answered. The study is done through observations and interviews with seven different museums, four of which are located in Sweden and three in Italy. The author has also used museological literature and theories in order to strengthen the essay and show that the issues brought up in the observations are known since before in the field, but still exist in the museums today.The exhibiting of pottery comes with several issues, such as overcrowding of displays, requirements of pre-knowledge from the visitors, aesthetical problems with broken, coarse or fine pottery and epistemological prob-lems. Epistemology is a subject that seems to be partly ignored in the observed museums, despite it being general knowledge that fewer visitors will read the text the longer it is. Other epistemological problems that are brought up are the issues of text placement, vocabulary and actual mediated information. These problems are brought up throughout the essay and explained, with a smaller section that discusses possible improvements to them, which have been brought up by researchers in the field.In interviews with curators of the museums, thoughts about what the visitors see and understand compared to what the museums want them the see are presented. Also their views on the possibilities of interaction with pottery as a mediator and whether they focus primarily on aesthetics or learning in the exhibitions are shown. This essay is not meant to be a decider between what is right or wrong concerning the exhibiting of pottery, but could be used as a stepping-stone towards such studies. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies. / Den här uppsatsen är en studie av krukor i museivärlden. Genomgående i studien kommer frågor som hur, varför och vad vi ställer ut tas upp och besvaras. Studien har gjorts genom observationer och intervjuer med sju olika museer, fyra belägna i Sverige och tre i Italien. Författaren har också använt sig av museologisk litteratur och museologiska teorier för att stärka uppsatsen och visa att de problem som tagits upp i observationerna är kända sedan tidigare inom fältet, men trots det existerar i museer idag.Utställande av krukor medför flera problem, såsom överfulla montrar, krav på förkunskaper hos besökarna, estetiska problem med trasig, bruks- eller finkeramik samt epistemologiska problem. Epistemologi verkar vara ett ämne som delvis ignoreras i de observerade museerna, trots att det är allmänt känt att färre besökare kommer att läsa texten ju längre den är. Andra epistemologiska problem som behandlas är sådana som textplacering, vokabu-lär och faktiskt förmedlad kunskap. Dessa problem tas upp och förklaras i uppsatsen med en mindre sektion som diskuterar möjliga förbättringar av dem, baserat på idéer från forskare inom fältet.I intervjuerna med curatorer från museerna presenteras deras tankar om vad besökarna ser och förstår jäm-fört med vad museerna vill att de ska förstå. Också deras syn på möjligheterna av interaktion genom krukor och huruvida de fokuserar främst på det estetiska eller pedagogiska i utställningarna visas. Den här uppsatsen är inte menad att skilja mellan rätt och fel vid utställandet av krukor, men kan användas som ett avstamp mot sådana studier. Det här är en två-årig masteruppsats i Arkiv-, Biblioteks- och Museivetenskap.

'Museum Communication: Learning, Interaction and Experience' is a study of how museums have evolved and handled their communication approaches at both theoretical and practical levels. It discusses questions like; how has museum communication developed? What influences do these developments have on museology and its related disciplines? How will museum communication develop in the future? These are questions closely connected with essential concepts of learning, interaction, participation and experience, which will be discussed throughout the thesis. Learning and exhibition theories will be considered alongside discussions of epistemological and philosophical approaches, interpretation, and social development of museological research. The research forms a discourse analysis of museums' own views and opinions of these issues through replies of a questionnaire. It also focuses on specific case studies and examples in order to combine theoretical definitions and empirical approaches with museological developments. To form a deeper understanding of how museological communication is developing, the research includes interviews with professionals of philosophy and storytelling as well. Finally, the approaches are summarised in a new museum model developed from future studies. This model, called 'The Transformative Museum', identifies essential points in which museums have developed their communication practices and theories, and discusses how these may develop in the future. As the responsibilities of museum curators develop, museums have to embrace the concepts of transformation and flexibility too. Inquiries, research, learning and participation have to be transformed into all kinds of experiences in order to respond to changing needs and flexible structures of communities and societies. The transformative museum will have to acknowledge past traditions, current trends and future opportunities simultaneously in order to become a museum of both present and future relevance for all kinds of visitors and users.