A hush settled across the table and we contemplated the future. There we were, an experienced board of a national arts organisation that was collecting and archiving key works of leading practitioners in the disability arts movement.
We needed a business plan that would deliver a technology strategy to ensure public money preserved the collection sustainably and kept it relevant and engaged for audiences. We planned to build web access, social media engagement and future data opportunities. What could possibly go wrong?
Museum practice has survived 250 years of reinvention, reclassification and evolution. But things have become more challenging for museums in the past 12 months because of some major changes in the digital world.
The shutting down of Storify in May last year could be seen as the starting point. This platform allowed museums to collect and keep social media engagement at a time when funders were just beginning to ask for social media traffic to be counted alongside web visits.
As Storify went dark, questions emerged about the nature of the free software environment, often dubbed as “freemium”. More grief followed, with threats to Flickr, used by thousands of museums, galleries and other arts organisations as an image repository.
Surveillance capitalism
Global media platforms need to attract ever-higher volumes of site users to attract advertising and to harvest data. Users equal data, equals income. Aral Balkan, an online rights campaigner, calls this “surveillance capitalism” and “a new era of people farming”.
“The world wide web is a most fitting name for the construct that enabled this,” Balkan says. “It’s a web with a giant spider in the middle. The spider goes by many names – Google, Facebook, Snapchat.”
For boards of organisations that are developing digital strategies and business plans, there’s a clear challenge emerging in terms of governance. Arts and heritage bodies are rightly expected to demonstrate good safeguarding and risk-management practices. We have to protect those in our learning centres, galleries, websites and social media feeds. When we hire public-facing staff we make sure that they have enhanced criminal record checks.
Funders and boards consider these as part of funding applications and audience development and learning strategies. Yet, in spite of seeing frequent revelations about Facebook spying on young people and trading personal information, we are expected by funders to develop winning, welcoming social media plans using these very platforms.
In February last year, I asked the Museums Computer Group (MCG), a non-profit body that promotes best practice in he use of technology and digital platforms in the UK museum sector, about the closure of Storify and the ethical challenges posed by failures in global social media. A discussion followed about whether the public sector could provide digital platforms to rival Facebook. Many suggested there would never be enough public money available to compete with the established giants.
There was also a general agreement that the old-fashioned “open web” pages on destination sites could supplement social media outreach. But there wasn’t much consensus about whether the ethics of social media were a barrier. “Social equals huge audiences, excellent experiences, great search engine optimisation,” said one respondent. “No reason to not use them.”
Mia Ridge, a former MCG chair and digital curator for Western Heritage Collections at the British Library in London, says: “It would be foolish to cut yourself off from the reach, approachability and potential virality of social media for marketing and communications. But, where possible, I’d plan to use in-house systems or affordable but paid-for alternatives for vital assets like newsletters.
“I’ve been exploring alternatives to Google Analytics for one project where it doesn’t seem appropriate to contribute to tracking people across the web. Cloud-based systems have many advantages, but we should ask hard questions of possible vendors about the potential for data misuse and monetisation, even when their service is free. It’s about finding the balance.”
Owen Hopkin, the director, audience insight and innovation, Arts Council England, says: “Social media platforms can provide exciting and innovative ways to engage with audiences and re-imagine cultural experiences. Hand-in-hand with these opportunities however, is a need to understand how each platform uses information, allowing organisations to make an informed choice about whether this is appropriate for the organisation and the target audience.”
Moves to decentralise
Clearly, if we cannot define an ethical framework for using data, we need to look for unbiased guidance. A statement from the Museums Association (which is the guardian of the Code of Ethics for the UK museum sector) refers to the potential dangers of museums using media platforms that harvest user data for profit: “There are a number of valid criticisms of working in a way which transfers some control (and potentially the ability to generate income) to tech companies.”
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has moved on from centralised platforms to a new decentralised model. This is about structurally removing the opportunity for monolithic corporations to build monopolistic positions. Berners-Lee is building his own version of a more ethical web, called Solid, via a new platform – Inrupt. But Balkan points out that Berners-Lee’s initiative is funded by venture capital and is part of the system he is trying to kick against.
“As a start, all we need is organisations and people with legitimacy to stop legitimising surveillance capitalists,” Balkan says. “If they remain socially acceptable, we won’t be able to regulate them and the alternatives won’t find the space to sprout.”
Others are also looking to create a digital infrastructure framework that could sustain future museum and gallery networks. In the UK, Irina Bolychevsky, a former government digital service strategist, has built a campaigning organisation intent on making the case for localised networks everywhere.
ReDecentralize argues that centralised systems perpetuate power relationships, and recent media campaigns against western democracies suggest centralised systems are particularly vulnerable to exploitation.
“Decentralisation has become a bigger movement now,” Bolychevsky says. “Blockchain and bitcoin have dominated the hype, but have distracted us from how we might have open digital infrastructure. Policymakers are still not sure which way to turn and don’t seem aware of the contradictions in partnering with big platforms.”
Balkan broadly agrees. “Invest in alternative social platforms like Mastodon, invest in your own website,” he says. “Think about starting an initiative to federate museum websites. Build strong relationships with your local community, local media, and so on. I definitely wouldn’t be investing in surveillance capitalism.”
Doteveryone, an independent technology thinktank, has been exploring what “responsible technology” means. Its chief executive, Rachel Coldicutt, recently launched Regulating for Responsible Technology, an ethical digital-standards framework for social change. This seeks to codify what the Doteveryone founder Martha Lane Fox, a digital entrepreneur, meant when she said: “Technology is a marvel – now let’s make it moral.”
Following Doteveryone’s social infrastructure development lead, one approach by funders could be to ensure museum standards don’t just cover traditional accessioning practices and collection governance.
You could argue that it’s time for the Accreditation standard to acknowledge the changing digital economy and offer guidance on whether or not it is good practice for museums to extensively use freemium platforms. These may save money, but could compromise data ethics. Should Accreditation standards support a different approach to digital preservation? Should Accredited museums agree not to track users and to not trade data?
Decentralisation is a fine idea if the localised cultural economy is fertile enough to support it, but in many places that may not be the case. What incremental steps can museums take to guard against failures by freemium platforms?
“Sustainability and resilience are key,” says Mike Ellis, a co-partner of the consultancy Thirty8 Digital. “Go nuts with new platforms, yes, but always have a plan in place for when they close their doors. Do not put all your stuff in one basket. Google has a terrible record in closing down things that it started.”
Digital goes social
Smith, in his piece for Museum magazine, talks about the imperatives that now face museums and galleries. “The values and principles inherent in the technology itself are diverging sharply from the values of the museums using it,” he says. “It is therefore time for a reckoning: we must now address not just the practical considerations of the technology we use, but also its moral and ethical implications. If we don’t, we risk compromising the values of the museums we serve.”
Ross Parry, the deputy pro-vice chancellor (digital) at the University of Leicester, is leading One By One, a 30-month digital literacy campaign for UK museums. “Interestingly, a current focus with One By One is work to guide museums, and people within them, into defining their core personal values,” he says.
“We are building a framework that will help people understand their needs. We must have a sense that people are digitally purposeful. In the past, it’s been about digital business efficiency. We now need to pause, look up and realise that our institutions have a higher purpose. It’s about digital becoming more social. We must ask questions about the ethics behind some of these platforms.”
Looked at like this, there is a lot that we can do with governing data and technology standards that puts power back in the hands of museums and galleries, and sets it in an important place-based context. For me, that means there’s potentially life after Google and Facebook.
Jon Pratty is a digital producer and curator
We needed a business plan that would deliver a technology strategy to ensure public money preserved the collection sustainably and kept it relevant and engaged for audiences. We planned to build web access, social media engagement and future data opportunities. What could possibly go wrong?
Museum practice has survived 250 years of reinvention, reclassification and evolution. But things have become more challenging for museums in the past 12 months because of some major changes in the digital world.
The shutting down of Storify in May last year could be seen as the starting point. This platform allowed museums to collect and keep social media engagement at a time when funders were just beginning to ask for social media traffic to be counted alongside web visits.
As Storify went dark, questions emerged about the nature of the free software environment, often dubbed as “freemium”. More grief followed, with threats to Flickr, used by thousands of museums, galleries and other arts organisations as an image repository.
Smaller museums have always struggled with deficits in digital budgets and skills. It’s not surprising that, for cost reasons, open-source or free platforms became the go-to option for less-well resourced organisations.
For many working in the arts and heritage sector, Blogger, Flickr, Wordpress, Tweetdeck, Storify, Vine, Instagram and Pinterest have become the default way to get people on board. Web pages need constant tuning and ongoing optimisation for search engines, so once build consultants are out of contract, social media has been an easy way to bring bigger audiences to a museum site.
Surveillance capitalism
The US-based digital consultant Koven Smith, writing in Museum, the American Alliance of Museums magazine, recently summed up the situation: “At museums, technologists once built solutions largely from scratch; now they implement and manage commercial technology.
This technology supports a range of museum functions: Wordpress to run the website, Medium to run the blog, Amazon to host images, and so on. Museums can do more, and faster, with this technology, but there’s a trade-off. Museums are now in a highly leveraged position: much of their own programming and daily operations are at the mercy of these software companies.”
Global media platforms need to attract ever-higher volumes of site users to attract advertising and to harvest data. Users equal data, equals income. Aral Balkan, an online rights campaigner, calls this “surveillance capitalism” and “a new era of people farming”.
“The world wide web is a most fitting name for the construct that enabled this,” Balkan says. “It’s a web with a giant spider in the middle. The spider goes by many names – Google, Facebook, Snapchat.”
For boards of organisations that are developing digital strategies and business plans, there’s a clear challenge emerging in terms of governance. Arts and heritage bodies are rightly expected to demonstrate good safeguarding and risk-management practices. We have to protect those in our learning centres, galleries, websites and social media feeds. When we hire public-facing staff we make sure that they have enhanced criminal record checks.
Funders and boards consider these as part of funding applications and audience development and learning strategies. Yet, in spite of seeing frequent revelations about Facebook spying on young people and trading personal information, we are expected by funders to develop winning, welcoming social media plans using these very platforms.
In February last year, I asked the Museums Computer Group (MCG), a non-profit body that promotes best practice in he use of technology and digital platforms in the UK museum sector, about the closure of Storify and the ethical challenges posed by failures in global social media. A discussion followed about whether the public sector could provide digital platforms to rival Facebook. Many suggested there would never be enough public money available to compete with the established giants.
There was also a general agreement that the old-fashioned “open web” pages on destination sites could supplement social media outreach. But there wasn’t much consensus about whether the ethics of social media were a barrier. “Social equals huge audiences, excellent experiences, great search engine optimisation,” said one respondent. “No reason to not use them.”
Mia Ridge, a former MCG chair and digital curator for Western Heritage Collections at the British Library in London, says: “It would be foolish to cut yourself off from the reach, approachability and potential virality of social media for marketing and communications. But, where possible, I’d plan to use in-house systems or affordable but paid-for alternatives for vital assets like newsletters.
“I’ve been exploring alternatives to Google Analytics for one project where it doesn’t seem appropriate to contribute to tracking people across the web. Cloud-based systems have many advantages, but we should ask hard questions of possible vendors about the potential for data misuse and monetisation, even when their service is free. It’s about finding the balance.”
Owen Hopkin, the director, audience insight and innovation, Arts Council England, says: “Social media platforms can provide exciting and innovative ways to engage with audiences and re-imagine cultural experiences. Hand-in-hand with these opportunities however, is a need to understand how each platform uses information, allowing organisations to make an informed choice about whether this is appropriate for the organisation and the target audience.”
Moves to decentralise
Clearly, if we cannot define an ethical framework for using data, we need to look for unbiased guidance. A statement from the Museums Association (which is the guardian of the Code of Ethics for the UK museum sector) refers to the potential dangers of museums using media platforms that harvest user data for profit: “There are a number of valid criticisms of working in a way which transfers some control (and potentially the ability to generate income) to tech companies.”
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has moved on from centralised platforms to a new decentralised model. This is about structurally removing the opportunity for monolithic corporations to build monopolistic positions. Berners-Lee is building his own version of a more ethical web, called Solid, via a new platform – Inrupt. But Balkan points out that Berners-Lee’s initiative is funded by venture capital and is part of the system he is trying to kick against.
“As a start, all we need is organisations and people with legitimacy to stop legitimising surveillance capitalists,” Balkan says. “If they remain socially acceptable, we won’t be able to regulate them and the alternatives won’t find the space to sprout.”
Others are also looking to create a digital infrastructure framework that could sustain future museum and gallery networks. In the UK, Irina Bolychevsky, a former government digital service strategist, has built a campaigning organisation intent on making the case for localised networks everywhere.
ReDecentralize argues that centralised systems perpetuate power relationships, and recent media campaigns against western democracies suggest centralised systems are particularly vulnerable to exploitation.
“Decentralisation has become a bigger movement now,” Bolychevsky says. “Blockchain and bitcoin have dominated the hype, but have distracted us from how we might have open digital infrastructure. Policymakers are still not sure which way to turn and don’t seem aware of the contradictions in partnering with big platforms.”
Balkan broadly agrees. “Invest in alternative social platforms like Mastodon, invest in your own website,” he says. “Think about starting an initiative to federate museum websites. Build strong relationships with your local community, local media, and so on. I definitely wouldn’t be investing in surveillance capitalism.”
Doteveryone, an independent technology thinktank, has been exploring what “responsible technology” means. Its chief executive, Rachel Coldicutt, recently launched Regulating for Responsible Technology, an ethical digital-standards framework for social change. This seeks to codify what the Doteveryone founder Martha Lane Fox, a digital entrepreneur, meant when she said: “Technology is a marvel – now let’s make it moral.”
Following Doteveryone’s social infrastructure development lead, one approach by funders could be to ensure museum standards don’t just cover traditional accessioning practices and collection governance.
You could argue that it’s time for the Accreditation standard to acknowledge the changing digital economy and offer guidance on whether or not it is good practice for museums to extensively use freemium platforms. These may save money, but could compromise data ethics. Should Accreditation standards support a different approach to digital preservation? Should Accredited museums agree not to track users and to not trade data?
Decentralisation is a fine idea if the localised cultural economy is fertile enough to support it, but in many places that may not be the case. What incremental steps can museums take to guard against failures by freemium platforms?
“Sustainability and resilience are key,” says Mike Ellis, a co-partner of the consultancy Thirty8 Digital. “Go nuts with new platforms, yes, but always have a plan in place for when they close their doors. Do not put all your stuff in one basket. Google has a terrible record in closing down things that it started.”
Digital goes social
But Ellis does think that the nature of new technologies in the pipeline means there is room for optimism. “The means by which stuff is delivered to our screens will continue to develop,” he says.
“IPFS [interplanetary file system] will continue to build – that’s a peer-to-peer distribution system, cutting out the central authority we feel uncomfortable about. Collections could continue to develop if there was such a distributed network. Diaspora and Mastodon are both open and shared social platforms. There are still opportunities around open source, open payments and so on.”
Smith, in his piece for Museum magazine, talks about the imperatives that now face museums and galleries. “The values and principles inherent in the technology itself are diverging sharply from the values of the museums using it,” he says. “It is therefore time for a reckoning: we must now address not just the practical considerations of the technology we use, but also its moral and ethical implications. If we don’t, we risk compromising the values of the museums we serve.”
Ross Parry, the deputy pro-vice chancellor (digital) at the University of Leicester, is leading One By One, a 30-month digital literacy campaign for UK museums. “Interestingly, a current focus with One By One is work to guide museums, and people within them, into defining their core personal values,” he says.
“We are building a framework that will help people understand their needs. We must have a sense that people are digitally purposeful. In the past, it’s been about digital business efficiency. We now need to pause, look up and realise that our institutions have a higher purpose. It’s about digital becoming more social. We must ask questions about the ethics behind some of these platforms.”
Looked at like this, there is a lot that we can do with governing data and technology standards that puts power back in the hands of museums and galleries, and sets it in an important place-based context. For me, that means there’s potentially life after Google and Facebook.
Jon Pratty is a digital producer and curator
