Anthropologist Manduhai Buyandelger was born in Mongolia and is now an associate professor of anthropology at MIT. She wrote something in her new book about the rise in Shamanism in Mongolia that really struck a chord with me as I grapple with the meaning of social media, and how much to use it here in our work at the MIT Museum. “Shamanism” she wrote “is a historical memory for people who lost parts of their ancestral homeland, and who had been marginalized and politically oppressed. It flourishes where people have no museums, no libraries, no cemeteries, no mausoleums.”

I read those words and was enlightened, as well as saddened to think about people who live without museums. I’ve come to think that the value of social media is that taken as a whole, it acts as collective memory for all of us on the planet. It’s a digital form of the work that Shamans do in Mongolia for their clients where according to Buyandelger, they give access to the “fragmented stories about their lives in the past”. Criminals and armies might destroy artifacts, extreme weather may eliminate our remains, and our archives, or maybe it will just be nonchalance that allows our lives to go unnoticed. But with social media we have a tool that will help to assure that a digital archive of ideas, photographs, audio recordings and ephemera will last long into the future – and it will be in different ways than artifacts have traditionally been preserved and curated in museums. 500 years from now someone might be able to figure out from Twitter what we ate for breakfast. Whether or not that will make the archeological search for my family’s cereal bowls more or less important, I’m not sure. But what we will have is a world-wide museum, filled to the brim and searchable with new tools, some likely not yet invented.

That’s my take on why new communication technologies, and social media in particular is not an oppressive challenge, but really an exciting field that demands more, not less attention by the museum world. The challenge now is how to think philosophically and operationally about social media. How can we introduce it as an ongoing topic for all staff in a variety of departments, and how do we want to engage with this new emerging field of communications, and use it to further human knowledge?

When I began working at the MIT Museum Facebook was just gaining steam and Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest were not yet invented. But like books, pencils or the ballpoint pen – once created and made available to the public, these social media tools have quickly become immensely popular. They make something that once was time consuming, laborious or expensive, easier, cheaper and in some cases just more fun. They are also platforms that regardless of whether they are used as a stand-alone communication method, or as part of a broader educational strategy, that are being used to expand human knowledge and spur creativity and innovation.

And they are not perfect. I could just as easily write an essay about the negatives that social media has wrought on all of us. Like most of you, I’m guessing, I’ve made missteps that I regret, but mistakes are part of the learning curve. And as organizations I hope we all are forgiving – to a degree, in any case! Policies we create about social media should mirror the values of our institutions. What kind of mistakes do we forgive? Are there ones people get fired for? Put in jail for? How we monitor social media posts created by staff is going to be unique for each organization, but just because the digital learning curve is steep doesn’t mean that we should ignore it.

A number of years ago, it was the marketing department that took the lead in developing social media accounts to communicate to the wider world about the Museum’s programs and exhibitions. At that time I had teenagers and they were using social media, so I had to pay attention and read up on how these new platforms might inform my work. While the Museum accounts still have a marketing focus, with some new staff, it’s likely we’ll be able to integrate social media more deeply into the educational aspect of programs and exhibitions.

As the marketing director, I’ve decided to use the platforms to showcase all the values and goals that the MIT Museum embraces, because I think that makes good marketing sense. These include: making science and technology accessible to the public, showcasing new research at MIT, inspiring people with a focus on those who ages 8+, and we hope people understand that we might be a bit quirky while we try to fulfill these goals because most scientists understand that searching for the new often means you must leave the path that most people are on.

During the past 8 years I’ve worked (not always successfully!) to teach staff about social media, why it might be valuable to them, and how it might help with our desire to improve communications.

• We’ve organized brown bag lunches, smaller meetings and committees
• I’ve attended workshops given by MIT and other organizations
• I review ideas, plans, and learn about new platforms on a regular basis
• We try new platforms and don’t use most.

The rapidity in which new technologies have landed on all of us should be viewed as a positive, rather than a challenge or a problem. (Really!) We have more choices now – and that’s a great thing, because all this technology allows us to add freely to the collective memory of the world. Political leaders will try to control this digital universe, but it’s like air. Clamp it down in one place, and it will leak out somehow.

I think it is important to talk to staff of all ages about how they use social media at home and at work, and ask questions about it at conferences, meetings, and most importantly, learn certain platforms and use them in one’s personal life. These are simple strategies that should help you meet your social media challenges at work. Just know that by finding the platforms that work best for you in your own museum will change more quickly than you would like, and those changes are just part of the process of staying current with the rest of the world.

The internet helps humanity share – from revolutions to butterfly migrations, from election results to animal cams – we can read about, or see almost everything happening in the world, just about in real time. Having such an instantaneous news feed is simply amazing to me. Museums can and should be part of this world encyclopedia; our work in social media is what makes that happen.

Josephine Patterson has been the Marketing and Public Relations Director of the MIT Museum since 2006. Her prior careers were in documentary filmmaking and public radio. She is currently a student in the Conflict Resolution program at UMA Boston, where she researches and writes about culture in local, national and international conflicts.

Photo Credit:
The Art of Social Media by Mary Henderson.
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