Abstract
This paper describes the motivation behind proposed research that will investigate the quality and scope of public debate inspired by museums and galleries; namely the conviction that social media has yet to reach its potential for enabling innovative critical debate within society, and that museums might have a role in realising this potential. Key to this conviction is the example that connoisseurs and critics provide for how to behave in a constructive debate, by understanding and supporting valuable and challenging ideas. They achieve this by regulating, skilfully, the emotions caused by such (potentially shocking) new ideas, then discerning and disseminating the implications underlying such emotions. As providers of cultural and historical knowledge, museums are ideally placed to teach us, and enable us to practice, such connoisseurial and critical skills. The research outlined by this paper takes two forms. Firstly, based on the assertion that innovation and inspiration manifest themselves in the form of a “change in shape” of networks (e.g. networks of neurons in the brain, or networks of people in a social network), longitudinal studies to show the states of museum social networks change during the course of exhibitions are proposed as a means to ascertain the kind of inspiration such events provide for the public. Secondly, based on the assertion that social media is yet to fulfil its potential to enable constructive democratic debate, research into the level, scope and quality of online debate within museum social networks, and related to their events and content, is proposed. The research will indicate how effectively museums are stimulating productive debate about important topics, and help museums become better at doing so.
Keywords
emotion regulation; innovation; social media; critical debate; museums
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2013.122
Citation
Gerrard, D., O’Brien, A.,and Jackson, T.(2013) Controversy and Debate within Social Media: Can Museums Improve 21st Century Democracy?, in Nimkulrat, N., Niedderer, K., Evans, M. (eds.), EKSIG 2013: Knowing Inside Out – Experiential Knowledge, Expertise and Connoisseurship, 4–5 July 2013, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2013.122
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Controversy and Debate within Social Media: Can Museums Improve 21st Century Democracy?
This paper describes the motivation behind proposed research that will investigate the quality and scope of public debate inspired by museums and galleries; namely the conviction that social media has yet to reach its potential for enabling innovative critical debate within society, and that museums might have a role in realising this potential. Key to this conviction is the example that connoisseurs and critics provide for how to behave in a constructive debate, by understanding and supporting valuable and challenging ideas. They achieve this by regulating, skilfully, the emotions caused by such (potentially shocking) new ideas, then discerning and disseminating the implications underlying such emotions. As providers of cultural and historical knowledge, museums are ideally placed to teach us, and enable us to practice, such connoisseurial and critical skills. The research outlined by this paper takes two forms. Firstly, based on the assertion that innovation and inspiration manifest themselves in the form of a “change in shape” of networks (e.g. networks of neurons in the brain, or networks of people in a social network), longitudinal studies to show the states of museum social networks change during the course of exhibitions are proposed as a means to ascertain the kind of inspiration such events provide for the public. Secondly, based on the assertion that social media is yet to fulfil its potential to enable constructive democratic debate, research into the level, scope and quality of online debate within museum social networks, and related to their events and content, is proposed. The research will indicate how effectively museums are stimulating productive debate about important topics, and help museums become better at doing so.