Museum Institutions in the Digital Age: The Insights of Malaysian Museums’ Use of Facebook

Media, entertainment, and other forms of popular culture play a significant role in shaping our perceptions of others. For many of us, popular culture is the primary way we learn about people who are different from us. The problem, though, is that many representations are based on cultural stereotypes, which tend to marginalize and caricature members of non-dominant groups. Through these representations, we see a limited, and distorted, view of others. Both entertainment and news media are powerful forces in creating and perpetuating negative cultural stereotypes, especially about racial and ethnic groups. In television and film, characters from non-dominant racial and ethnic groups often fall into formulaic tropes, and their storylines easily follow cliché narratives. The consistency of these representations reinforces stereotypes and makes them more readily available in our minds. Over the last decade, museums have experienced a strong cultural shift from object-oriented towards audience-oriented strategic approaches. The new approaches need to be addressed due to social change and the advent of communication technology as a result of the establishment of new forms of community. This research paper examines the relevant literature on this transformation and presents supportive evidence of the impact that social media have upon the relationship between museum institutions and their audiences. The Department of Museums Malaysia’s Facebook page provides a comprehensive evaluation of the museum’s general social media strategy. Given the widespread and dominance use of Facebook and other social media, the degree of engagement of museum institutions and social media seem to have become an inseparable factor on the scale of effectiveness of the relation with museum audiences and the levels of visitor attendance. The purpose of this research aims to provide an initial comprehensive set of insights into the use of social media by museum institutions by using one of the most prestigious museums in Malaysia as a case study.