ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals how museum infrastructures can exclude staff from practising social media in meaningful ways, particularly enacting and building the skills that underpin social media as a form of ‘craft’. This chapter draws on the social media practices of staff across Glasgow Museums as situated in institutional context and a history of practices. It further interweaves these observations with parallels identified in interviews with social media professionals at other cultural institutions across Scotland. In turn, the chapter illuminates three main limits of the museum infrastructure as they intersect with social media work, including (1) ambiguity regarding the purpose of social media, (2) limited resources for social media work which are entangled with a politics of value, and finally, (3) hierarchal restrictions having to do with risk aversion, which together, exclude staff from participating in social media practices. Staff respond to these limitations in various ways, including by rebelling, being resourceful, and becoming disengaged. In turn, the chapter suggests some future imaginaries or alternative institutional infrastructures that may include staff in social media practices. These imaginaries could support the creative socio-technical negotiations observed and discussed in the following chapters by cultivating staff trust, making institutional resources available, and encouraging colleague support.
