The Online Museum: A "Placeless" Space of the "Civic Laboratory"

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Published: Jul 6, 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14434/mar.v8i1.3187
Keywords:
Museum Exhibitions, Research, Theory, Methodology, Evaluation, Ethnography, Behaviorism, Communications Theory
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Peer-Reviewed Articles
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Natalia Grincheva
Concordia University

Abstract

Building on Tony Bennett’s (1995) understanding of a museum as a “civic laboratory,” this study advances this framework by researching a museum space in a virtual world. It shows that an online museum can be understood as a “placeless” space of a “civic laboratory” by analyzing visitor research methodologies that are utilized online. Through comparison of traditional museum-visitor research tools and methods with the ones that online museum spaces employ, this article seeks to demonstrate that the online museum environment is equipped with a plethora of tools that make it a laboratory-type research setting where visitor studies are conducted. The analysis reveals that the historical development of online museum-audience research has gone through methodological stages similar to those of traditional visitor research.

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Author Biography

Natalia Grincheva, Concordia University

PhD Candidate, Humanities Doctoral Program, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Society and Culture, Concordia University

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