hvor brugere kan danne interpersonelle

Der er derfor endnu en lang vej før museerne kan slippe styringen som afsender til at lade brugerne interagere med hinanden og med museets indhold. Som jeg har illustreret i mine løsningsforslag, er der dog rig mulighed for, at museerne tager kontrol og udnytter de nye trends mod lokationsbaserede mobile internetenheder – som for eksempel GPS-baseret geocaching – det vil kunne bringe museerne i front med udviklingen og samtidig understøtte museet som en social begivenhed, hvor brugere kan danne interpersonelle relationer gennem konversationel kommunikation. Jensens fire kommunikationsmønstre kan bruges som direkte afsæt til at udvikle kommunikation med IKT som middel. Museerne vil kunne imødekomme den digitale generation og bevare deres autoritet ved at udvikle deres kommunikation og oplevelser ud fra de fire kommunikationsmønstre. På den måde kunne aksen spænde over på den ene side at lade museerne kontrollere kommunikationen over en konsultativ og registrerende interaktion til en konversationel interaktion i den anden ende af aksen, hvor brugerne vil kunne kontrollere kommunikationen. Museerne har en forpligtelse til at gøre kulturarven relevant for mange forskellige brugertyper, og i et polycentrisk samfund er det derfor afgørende, at museerne ved anvendelse af de fire kommunikationsmønstre udvikler flerstemmige og differentierede oplevelser og sidst men ikke mindst – lytter til og lærer af deres brugere.

Den digitale generation på museum ABSTRACT The advent of Web 2.0, characterized by horizontal networks of interacting users, has left the traditional, exhibition based museum with some fundamental challenges. Along with some rather radical changes to the Web as well as an increasingly complex society, a younger and more tech savvy museum audience is emerging. This new audience, the digital generation, not only questions the authority and function of the museums; it expects that museums are present on the web, and it expects this presence to be characterized by at least some of the core features inherent to the social web: Functionality facilitating democratic discussion, horizontal structures, and user participation, just to name a few. As an overall purpose, the thesis is trying to explore this basic conflict. It sets off to describe key communication processes as they take place between museums and their audience via information technology, most notably the Web. More specifically, it tries to shed some light on the communicative relationship between the digital generation and the museums it meets online, as seen from both perspectives: On one hand the demands and expectations this audience has towards the museums, and on the other hand how these expectations actually correspond to the nature of the museum’s communication online.

First off, it tries to achieve this by describing some fundamental traits of what is identified as the information technological society and the renewed role of the museum as an institution in this society. In order to establish a theoretical grounding, communication as a concept is briefly accounted for by means of the two commonly mentioned approaches, communication as interaction and as transmission. Since the former is central to communication using information technology, and thus also to the thesis at hand, this approach is additionally expanded upon. Following a characterization of the aforementioned digital generation, the thesis suggests some improvements to the web communication strategy of two Danish museums, Danmark Fotomuseum and Holstebro Museum. In a concluding remark, it is noted that while the Web as a whole successfully integrates the social and interactional features expected by the digital generation, the current museum websites to some degree reflect the fact that Danish museums tend to have a hard time letting go of their traditional communicational role – that is, an authoritative position as sender of communication that tends to be one-way.