Museum leaders’ perspectives on social media

In the context of the shift towards participatory practices within museums, museum engagement with social media represents a form of organizational change. This study approaches social media and the corresponding organizational change from a museum leader’s perspective, utilizing data from a broad cross-section of 82 museums in Norway. We address how the characteristics of a museum and its leader impact social media attitudes, behaviors and intention towards social media-based change. Combining factor analysis and clustering techniques, we identify four museum leader ‘types’ who are primarily defined by their (1) perception of museum benefits from social media, (2) perception of own and museum support in social media activities, (3) perception of conflicts that arise from social media usage, and (4) social media-related values. With museums being asked to more fully embrace the participatory potential of social media, this study points to significant differences in readiness to change across museum leaders.