THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITES OF MUSEUMS ON SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract

The theme of International Museum Day in 2015 is “Museums for a sustainable society”, and ICOM President Hans-Martin Hinz notes the increasingly important role that museums are playing as educational and cultural intermediaries in contributing to the definition of sustainable development and the realisation of its practice. A prerequisite for museums to contribute to the sustainable development of society is their own sustainable and stable development. In this paper, the discussion of “sustainability” is therefore divided into two main categories: the sustainability of the museum itself and the role of the museum in the sustainability of society. In recent years, scientific and technological developments and advances in mobile devices have accelerated the extension of social media from a privatised space to a public space of dialogue, and have increasingly wrapped cultural institutions such as museums into social and public interaction. In this process, social media and websites play an important role in the sustainability of museums. This paper takes the Palace Museum in China as an example to analyse its successful use of social media and websites, including its official website, Weibo and WeChat official accounts and cultural and creative online shop, and further explore the challenges faced by museums in terms of sustainability, in the hope of contributing to the sustainability of museums.