The Platformisation of Museums

This open access book critically engages with the influence digital platforms and platformisation have on museums’ practice and politics. Museums increasingly communicate and conserve via digital media (digital collections, podcasts, websites, etc.) and digital platforms (TikTok, Instagram, Wikipedia, etc.). Consequently, the power to preserve and represent is fashioned by platforms and platform providers such as Meta, Alphabet/Google, X and ByteDance. The book investigates the opportunities and challenges that museums face when using digital platforms, asks critical questions regarding the museum’s role in a field of cultural production, preservation and dissemination that is increasingly affected by AI driven content curation, and the logics of platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. To do so, it collects and analyses a unique set of empirical material from renowned European museums to draw out insights on the pros and cons of museum communication on digital media and digital platforms.