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Ett digitaliserat Sverige : en studie om digitalisering och krav vid kommunala museer

Magnusson, Sarah LU (2020) ABMM74 20201
Division of ALM and Digital Cultures
Abstract
The aim of this master thesis is to examine how institutional rules and demands, present in cultural politics, affects the work with digitalisation in local museums. According to narrative trends in Sweden’s national cultural politics, digitalisation has the potential to encourage and increase democracy by enabling participation and wider access. Therefore, digitisation practices in cultural institutions are frequently presented as a tool to achieve the national cultural politics objectives. During the year of 2009, the arts committee of the region of Scania gave the culture administration the assignment to create a strategy for digital culture. The digital strategy was presented in 2012 and accompanied with an action plan. One of the... (More)
The aim of this master thesis is to examine how institutional rules and demands, present in cultural politics, affects the work with digitalisation in local museums. According to narrative trends in Sweden’s national cultural politics, digitalisation has the potential to encourage and increase democracy by enabling participation and wider access. Therefore, digitisation practices in cultural institutions are frequently presented as a tool to achieve the national cultural politics objectives. During the year of 2009, the arts committee of the region of Scania gave the culture administration the assignment to create a strategy for digital culture. The digital strategy was presented in 2012 and accompanied with an action plan. One of the actions in the plan was to demand digital strategies from all the cultural institutions that received fixed activity funds. However, the demand did not include any extra activity funds. This presented an interesting opportunity to examine how local museums work with increased demands regarding digitalisation. By doing interviews with museum staff in combination with a comparative text analysis of digital strategies, this master thesis explores how three local museums handle increased demands of digitilsation activities from cultural policy. The results are then analysed with a new institutionalism perspective. The study shows that other than the demand for a digital strategy, there are barely any clear demands regarding digitalisation. This seems to be associated with the fact that the museums receive no extra funding for digitisation activities. There is however a clear political interest since the mid-90s and there are similar normative narratives that are presented on different levels. This could be coercive and normative isomorphism that affects how the institutions handle questions and activities regarding digitalisation. The study also shows that digitalisation is an activity that the museum field embraced early on and is something that seemed to have fit the role and needs of the museums. However, it also seems that the local museums struggle to keep up the digitalisation activities without more funding. This means there is a paradox between increased political interest regarding digitalisation, but few funding opportunities for local museums that create sustainability. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Magnusson, Sarah LU
supervisor
organization
course
ABMM74 20201
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
digitisation, digitalisation, museum, collections management, cultural politics, cultural policy, new institutionalism, digitalisering, samlingsförvaltning, kulturpolitik, nyinstitutionell teori
language
Swedish
id
9026992
date added to LUP
2022-11-16 09:13:45
date last changed
2022-11-16 09:13:45
@misc{9026992,
  abstract     = {{The aim of this master thesis is to examine how institutional rules and demands, present in cultural politics, affects the work with digitalisation in local museums. According to narrative trends in Sweden’s national cultural politics, digitalisation has the potential to encourage and increase democracy by enabling participation and wider access. Therefore, digitisation practices in cultural institutions are frequently presented as a tool to achieve the national cultural politics objectives. During the year of 2009, the arts committee of the region of Scania gave the culture administration the assignment to create a strategy for digital culture. The digital strategy was presented in 2012 and accompanied with an action plan. One of the actions in the plan was to demand digital strategies from all the cultural institutions that received fixed activity funds. However, the demand did not include any extra activity funds. This presented an interesting opportunity to examine how local museums work with increased demands regarding digitalisation. By doing interviews with museum staff in combination with a comparative text analysis of digital strategies, this master thesis explores how three local museums handle increased demands of digitilsation activities from cultural policy. The results are then analysed with a new institutionalism perspective. The study shows that other than the demand for a digital strategy, there are barely any clear demands regarding digitalisation. This seems to be associated with the fact that the museums receive no extra funding for digitisation activities. There is however a clear political interest since the mid-90s and there are similar normative narratives that are presented on different levels. This could be coercive and normative isomorphism that affects how the institutions handle questions and activities regarding digitalisation. The study also shows that digitalisation is an activity that the museum field embraced early on and is something that seemed to have fit the role and needs of the museums. However, it also seems that the local museums struggle to keep up the digitalisation activities without more funding. This means there is a paradox between increased political interest regarding digitalisation, but few funding opportunities for local museums that create sustainability.}},
  author       = {{Magnusson, Sarah}},
  language     = {{swe}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Ett digitaliserat Sverige : en studie om digitalisering och krav vid kommunala museer}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}