A Stakeholder Perspective on Heritage Branding and Digital Communication

Abstract

How does an archaeological museum understand its function in a digital environment? Consumer expectations are rapidly shifting, from what used to be a passive relationship with exhibition contents, towards a different one, in which interaction, individuality and proactivity define the visitor experience. This consumer paradigm is much studied in fast moving markets, where it provokes immediately measurable impacts. In other fields, such as tourism and regional development, the very heterogeneous nature of the product to be branded makes it near to impossible for only one player to engage successfully.This systemic feature implies that museums, acting as major stakeholders, often anchor a regional brand around which SME tend to cluster, and thus assume responsibilities in constructing marketable identities. As such, the archaeological element becomes a very useful trademark. On the other hand, it also emerges erratically on the Internet, in personal blogs, commercial websites, and social networks. This forces museums to enter as a mediator, authenticating contents and providing credibility. What might be called the digital pull factor poses specific challenges to museum management: what is to be promoted, and how, in order to create and maintain a coherent presence in social media? The underlying issue this paper tries to address is how museums perceive their current and future role in digital communication.

Exploring Archaeological Organizations’ Communication on Facebook: A Review of MOLA's Facebook Page

“…The intention was to present a snapshot of day-to-day performance and to focus on the most recent activity, observing it for one month. This one-month focus aligns with other work in the field, including the Culture24 Action Research project(Malde et al 2013;Finnis et al 2011).…”

“…Facebook consistently proves to be one of the most popular social media platforms, having transformed the social media landscape by providing a unique setting for individual and professional online presences (Matthews and Wallis 2015; Pett 2012). The platform is widely used by archaeological organizations to help implement their essential goals and activities, such as branding and marketing, broadcasting and outreach, and participation and community engagement (De Man and Oliveira 2016; Goskar 2012; Whitcher-Kansa and Deblauwe 2011; Marakos 2014; Matthews and Wallis 2015; Pett 2012; Richardson 2014; Walker 2014).…”

“…The use of social networks for public engagement in archaeology, the possibilities of rapid dissemination of archaeological heritage, and the challenges of ensuring sustainable online participation via social networks are major concerns discussed by different researchers who have investigated social media use in the field of archaeology. In general, the main challenge for any archaeological organization is to determine what to promote-and how-in order to create and maintain a coherent presence on social media (De Man and Oliveira 2016). Professional archaeological bodies find themselves increasingly concerned with marketing and the creation of a strong online brand, as well as with the means to deploy social media to establish their research presence and pursue forms of participatory, multivocal dialogue (Pett 2012).…”

Sustainable Tourism in the Open Innovation Realm: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…Sharing the idea that digital tools are considered a transversal component of innovation in the tourism sector and not the key component, such as the organizational and experiential [13][14][15], they can enhance the core pillars of sustainability, as they are supportive through their characteristics of economic and ecological added value.…”

An Ontology of Semiotic Activity and Epistemic Figuration of Heritage, Memory and Identity Practices on Social Network Sites

“…This is in contrast to using INCLUSIVITY and COLLABORATION frames (Kidd, 2011), which successfully engage the community directly in museum activities such as curating, archiving and managing collections, or capturing community stories and autobiographies in new content (Bernstein, 2008). Therefore, the importance to create institutional policy for SNS and to measure IMPACT has been widely acknowledged (Cadell, 2013;De Man & Oliveira, 2016;Finnis et al, 2011;Malde et al, 2013;Marakos, 2014;Pett, 2012;Rodrı´guez Temin˜o & Gonza´lez Acun˜a, 2014;Visser & Richardson, 2013;Walker, 2014a).…”