Collections As Networked Images: The (Re)Use Of The Science Museum Group Collections In The Form Of Digital Images Through Social Media

Science Museum Group (SMG) collections have been shared through social media as digital images. This thesis seeks to understand how the SMG collection is shared through social media, and whether the sharing of digital images of the SMG collection through social media is an act of heritage creation or the interpretation of heritage through sharing and recontextualising. Does this expand on or provide new understandings of the objects? In what form is the image being shared as a digital object? Building on the work of Andrew Dewdney and Katrina Sluis, collection images shared through social media are understood as ‘networked images’, in that they are the sum of their many linkages both technological and social. This digital humanities PhD uses qualitative, as well as computational methods and sources. Twitter and Pinterest are the social media platforms studied, and all data collection was undertaken before the COVID-19 pandemic. Images of encounters with the SMG collections, both physical encounters shared digitally and digital to digital sharing of collections, are in scope. The automation of context when collections are shared through social media and how digital infrastructures can facilitate the sharing of museum interpretation are explored. The digital object, or networked image, shared through social media is a vehicle for museum interpretation of collections as well as an opportunity for people to recontextualise the collections themselves.