Ethical issues of social media in museums: a case study

Abstract The emerging media landscape of the early twenty-first century is motivating the professionalization of ‘social media’ in museum work. Through a case study of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, this article explores the ethics of this work by considering how social media is both in tension and synergy with modern museum practice. The ethical questions raised about transparency, censorship, respect for constituencies, preservation, and privacy are not exactly new, but are asked in a different realm of publicness and persistence than that of physical museum space. It concludes with the admonition for museums to train their employees to understand the nature of the social media landscape in order to judiciously assess its limitations and opportunities.