Visitor perspectives on commenting in museums

Commenting in museums is a well-established way to give visitors a voice and encourage engagement with exhibition themes and with the institution. Despite its many benefits, we know little about the visitor perspective on commenting as current literature focuses mainly on museum and technology perspectives. This paper reports on a survey exploring visitors’ mental models, expectations and preferences when submitting comments to a museum. It briefly discusses related literature, describes the survey methodology and presents findings structured into six themes, including visitors’ (i) preferences for different commenting and feedback mechanisms, (ii) interest in personal information about comment authors, (iii) expectations on who reads submitted comments, (iv) assumptions about comment moderation, (v) views on the conservation of comments and (vi) opinions on ownership and potential reuse of comments. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations and suggestions on how findings might inform policies and practices around commenting in museums.