Towards a paradigm for online heritage: cyber communities and digital educommunication

Figures & data

Table 1. Decalogue of good practices for the optimisation of educational-communication processes in social networks by museums

	Keys	Description
1	Having a strategic digital communication plan	The scientific literature reviewed has revealed that most of the museum institutions studied did not have a plan or a roadmap to guide their communication policy in the digital sphere (Badell, 2015). Designing and drafting said strategic communication plan helps museums to reflect on and establish objectives and content to be covered, to plan and prepare long-term initiatives, to analyse their target audiences and to evaluate processes (Padua et al., 2020; Perez, 2021). At the same time, it prevents museums’ digital communication from being transitory and circumstance-driven and makes it possible for several people to be responsible for management under the same communication policy.
2	Continuous promotion of dialogue and active interaction with users	In order to establish a close relationship with the public, maintaining an active presence of content creation and digital exchange. All aspects of social media management by museums should revolve around the principles of dialogical communication (Kim et al., 2014; Losada-Díaz & Capriotti, 2015), a key element in creating and establishing educommunicative initiatives that will generate educational processes related to heritage in the Internet. In this regard, if museums want to involve and gain the loyalty of their audiences in the digital sphere, they should consider four criteria (Carpentier, 2012): a) the provision of quality content; b) the appropriate use of social platforms depending on their possibilities and technical characteristics; c) motivating interaction; and d) encouraging active listening – users should recognise the museum’s will to change and improve through their comments and opinions. Examples: “Museo Arqueológico Nacional” of Spain with its #RetoMAN proposal (Twitter https://twitter.com/MANArqueologico), “National Gallery” in London on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/nationalgallery/) or “Van Gogh Museum” with #vangoghinspires (Instagram https://www.instagram.com/vangoghmuseum/). Similarly, the proposal launched on Twitter with the hashtag #askamuseum by “Ask a Museum” (https://twitter.com/AskAMuseum).
3	Horizontal and democratic two-way – bidirectional – communication	In accordance with the dialogical educommunication posited by Freire (1973), museum institutions should promote opportunities for dialogue and the exchange of opinions regarding heritage, processes that redefine assets and opportunities to listen and be listened to – active listening. Based on this premise, the roles of sender and receiver disappear, and communication participants, or emirecs, take their place. Social museums could promote these types of dialogue and debates about heritage by posing questions on their platforms about the meaning of their works, their possible origin, their alternative suggestions for their interpretation, etc. This empowers users, making them the focus through what they already know and, ultimately, gaining their loyalty to the cultural institution. Museums should not censure or regulate users’ comments unless they overstep the limits of politeness and civility. Examples: “Canadian Museum of History” (Facebook https://www.facebook.com/CanMusHistory), “Museo Diocesano de Jaca” (Twitter https://twitter.com/museojaca) or “Conjunto Monumental de la Alcazaba de Almería” with its proposals #trivialalcazabeño or #AlcazabaOnline (Twitter https://twitter.com/AlcazabaAlmeria).
4	Attractive proposals and posts	In order to generate long-term conversations, users need to get involved with the museum and, therefore, the first step is to attract these cybernauts (Safko & Brake, 2009). To this end, social networks make it possible to create and disseminate attractive, interesting content using a wide range of formats, including texts, emoticons, photographs, pure visuals, images with text, audio, video, GIFs, links, etc. Museums should use the possibilities that social media offer them in terms of formats, getting out of their comfort zone based on their almost exclusive use of one-way resources, such as images and texts. Examples: “Museo del Prado” with daily videos and live feeds on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/museoprado/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/museonacionaldelprado), “Museo Arqueológico Nacional” of Spain (Twitter) or “Musée du Louvre” (Twitter https://twitter.com/MuseeLouvre).
5	Gratification	The uses and gratifications model proposed by Blumler and Katz (1974) and adapted for social media conceives the media as a way of satisfying and meeting needs regarding social interaction. Using this approach, users should have a positive experience or exchange in their interaction with the community, so that self-management occurs naturally as a result of the interest generated within the community. There is a need, therefore, to create dynamics that arouse a range of motivations through the different channels. The values and relationships or meanings that users create with museums will depend on the immersion and participation experiences that museums provide for them. Examples: “CM Alcazaba de Almería” with its proposal #quedadaAlcazaba, which led to the on-site exhibition inside the complex entitled “Las mil y una alcazabas (The thousand and one citadels)” or “National Gallery” on Instagram where you can choose which paintings to explain in their stories.
6	Friendly communication	Museums’ communication attitude and tone should be empathetic to users and their environment, with commemorative or special days marked on calendars. This aspect is not disconnected from gratification, since the need arise in communities for a feeling of closeness, despite geographical distance. “Being close” to others leads users towards a more continuous interaction, thus forming heritage communities; we are talking, therefore, about emotional resonance. The emotion manifested in users lead them towards immersive attitudes to museums, thereby activating their participation – they answer questions posed by the institution, explore works of art, research, etc. Examples: “Museo de Almería” (Twitter https://twitter.com/Museo_Almeria), “Museo de Cádiz” (Twitter https://twitter.com/MuseoCadiz) or “Museo Diocesano de Jaca” (Twitter).
7	Inquisitive attitude	Kaplún (2002) argued that the media educator should not make statements but ask questions to create conditions that favour personal reflection, in a dialogue and not a monologue. Using this premise, museums can use open and direct questioning as a good linguistic mechanism to activate educommunicative processes and arouse the interest of audiences by answering questions asked on social media. This inquisitive attitude, where there is no closed or assumed prior knowledge, is connected to the constructivist paradigm of learning and to the Socratic method. Examples: “MoMA The Museum of Modern Art” (Twitter https://twitter.com/MuseumModernArt), “Museo de Altamira” (Twitter https://twitter.com/museodealtamira) with the interpretation of the cave paintings or “Museo de Prehistoria de Valencia (MUPREVA)” on Twitter (https://twitter.com/muprevalencia).
8	Evaluation of action on platforms	All improvement processes must first begin by knowing what is being done. Evaluation is a fundamental and decisive process in finding out what is being done and to analyse strong and weak points, opportunities and dangers. Museums should implement planned evaluation processes regarding their educommunicative actions on social media (Pagano et al., 2016; Pietroni, 2019), with a wide range of options to evaluate: from quantitative monitoring analysis to qualitative evaluation based on the comments of online visitors, including surveys, sentiment analysis, etc.
9	Meaningful heritage	The raw material that museums work with has an incalculable value; the cultural heritage housed within their walls is the selection and sediment of culture, and, therefore it concerns the whole community and not just museums as legal institutions. This means accepting that heritage, regardless of who manages it, is everyone’s and for everyone. Starting from this premise, museums should curate heritage assets based on emotions and memory, generating ties between people and assets (Fontal, 2003). The ultimate aim of these heritagisation processes is the raising of public awareness about heritage. Examples: those local museums that speak from their archival collections, such as the “Museo Diocesano de Jaca” (Facebook https://www.facebook.com/museojaca), “Heard Museum” in Phoenix (Facebook https://www.facebook.com/HeardMuseum) or “Bytown museum” in Ottawa on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bytownmuseum/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/bytown).
10	The humanised museum	All the above results in a version that is close to the humanised museum that helps to better understand cultural meanings and enables active dialogue that questions audiences and talks directly to them. The aim is to achieve a transformation of museums themselves, which are turned into participants in their own educommunicative proposals to pave the way for a real democratic horizontality that arouses reflections, poses challenges and asks key questions. Examples: “MARQ Museo Arqueológico Provincial de Alicante” and its videos during the pandemic with museum staff giving guided tours or the Canadian Museum of Immigration for its theme and Facebook posts (https://www.facebook.com/CanadianMuseumofImmigration).

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