ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how social media is helping to facilitate grassroots and non-hierarchical initiatives that seek to change museum practice and, more particularly, to embed ‘activist practice’ within museums, equipping visitors with tools to become active, engaged citizens. It examines the ways in which these campaigns, conversations and interactions have intersected with and informed more established dissemination methods and explores how this use of social media is shaping museum thinking and practice more broadly. The chapter also looks at how each initiative developed, how their nature and effectiveness was shaped by their use of Twitter, and describes how the work they do can be understood to be activist, not only in terms of content, but also in terms of the methods they utilise to meet their stated aims. It highlights how new forms of communication and methods of online networking present opportunities for museums to engage in activist practice, in many museums, planned months and sometimes years in advance.
