Young Visitors’ “Messing Around” in Museums: Exploring social media to engage teens in participation

Abstract

With the advent of social media, discussions of museum participation have taken a new direc-tion. We explore social media and mobile phones to engage teens in participation during museum visits in the form of co-creation and contribution of content. In an experimental set-up at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, we asked a group of 13-year olds to explore and share reflections on issues related to Viking ships with mobile phones and visitor blog. The youths’ exploration of the exhibition became more engaging with the mobile phone, and we discuss how integration of the blog in the museum visit could have been more related to the teens’ on-going activities outside the museum and how their communication and participation could be fostered through the museum.