To this point, I’ve tended to side with the idea that social media facilitates a sense of community for small cultural institutions, but that things like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. aren’t communities unto themselves (as they affect cultural heritage institutions, that is). My thinking is changing, but it comes with conditions.
For example, I follow a few fan pages on Facebook. Mostly what I find on these pages is a pushing of content from the page creator, but I see little true engagement with other fans of the page. This seems to be true of most institutions that have Facebook fan pages and Twitter identities. Lots of content being pushed, but little engagement with the fans and followers.
On the other hand, I see relatively more engagement with fans and followers in cases where an original physical place of gathering (e.g. an actual museum) did not previously exist. From the American Association of Museums, for example, content tends to come in the form of exchanging ideas. Individual institutions, on the other hand, tend to use their blogs, Facebook fan pages, and Twitter identities to push news of events and activities that are taking place at their respective physical locations.
Why the difference? Perhaps it is because people join associations and other ”non-physical” gathering places to do just that, exchange ideas. By comparison, social media has been a boon for libraries and museums. Social media provides a free and effective way to spread news of events.
Has anyone else noticed these trends? I’m especially interested in the exceptions to and disagreements with what I’ve described here.
