Museum 2.0: A study into the culture of expertise within the museum blogosphere

Authors

  • Jessica Verboom Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • Payal Arora Erasmus University Rotterdam

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v18i8.4538

Keywords:

Expertise, museum blogs, online space, participation, social media, Web 2.0

Abstract

While studies on popular culture have a more vast understanding of the impact of the participatory culture on experts and expertise, there is a dearth of literature on the impact of Web 2.0 on museums, which are established authorities within the cultural field. We aim to answer the following research question here: who are the experts and what is the nature of their expertise in the museum blogosphere? In addition, we look at the spatial culture on these museum blogs and its role in shaping expertise. We address this question by conducting a content analysis on a sample of the top ten ranked museum blogs, and find that new experts have entered the playing field and expertise is constructed in the personal and social context of an entertainment-oriented blogosphere.

Author Biographies

Jessica Verboom, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Jessica Verboom MA is a Research Assistant in the Department of Media and Communication at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This paper contains material from her Master?s thesis for the Media, Culture & Society programme.

Payal Arora, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Dr. Payal Arora is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her expertise lies in social computing, cybercultures, new media literacies, and international development. She is the author of Dot Com Mantra: Social Computing in the Central Himalayas, a book published by Ashgate on new media usage in India. Her upcoming second book by Routledge, Virtual and Real Leisure Spaces: A Comparative and Cross-Cultural Analysis, investigates contemporary public leisure space through a historical and transnational lens. Her expertise lies in social computing, cybercultures, new media literacies and international development. Her work has been published in several international peer-reviewed scholarly journals and as book chapters. Her paper on digitalization of healthcare information in 2010 won the Best Paper in Social Informatics Award by the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T). She is the recipient of the EUR Fellowship Award for 2012-2014.

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Published

2013-07-27

How to Cite

Verboom, J., & Arora, P. (2013). Museum 2.0: A study into the culture of expertise within the museum blogosphere. First Monday, 18(8). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v18i8.4538