1. Assisting Audience Participation through Reading
Rhetoric and Innovating Online Forum Design
Mar y Pettice
12 April, 2012
Museums and the Web 2012, San Diego, CA USA

2. The Story—from the beginning

3. In praise of generalists, or, why I‟m here

4. Puke Ariki Museum, Library, and
Information Centre
New Plymouth, Aotearoa/New Zealand

5. Have Your Say

7. What I knew, and what I had to learn

8. The promise: Digital democracy and
the enlightened citizen

9. The reality:
“Someone is wrong on the Internet.”

10. The broken public forum: CNN

11. Forums are failing in online news sites
and many other online communities

12. Journalists are on the story

13. Challenges facing online forums:
Scalability: Where am I? What are the best comments?
Civility: Failures of decorum?
Constructive Interaction
The good: “Posting comments in both online
newspaper and blogs appears to increase participants‟ interest
in politics” (Mitchelstein, 2011).
The bad: Faced with “fallacious symptomatic
arguments” and “ad hominem attacks,” “the deliberative
democratic potential of online discussion is a long way from
the deliberative ideal” (Richardson & Stanyer, 2011).

14. Scalability solutions: Slashdot

15. Scalability solutions: Reddit

16. But what if
deliberation is not
the highest
function of online
comment areas?

17. Narration, no
t
deliberation—
it‟s all about
the story

18. Storytelling and the museum visitor
The engaged visitor makes meaning of the stories museums
tell, these impressions and encounters; the engaged online
forum member on a museum-hosted site should be
prompted to do the same. And if the stories told by the
museum yield fragments of thoughtful narratives from online
commenters, the value of online forums may not be in
deliberation, but in narration.

19. Institutional goals and the forum
The goal of the museum online comment area, then, should
be to encourage visitors‟ storytelling:
about their trip to the museum,
about how they reacted to an exhibit,
about how they responded to another visitor‟s
interpretation,
and about how they meet and match the museum‟s
story as they make it relevant to their own lives and
identities.

21. Why bother?
The creation of a thoughtful, well designed comment space serves two
basic visitor-directed functions for the museum:
1) It allows visitors to interact with museum stories and staff, and
2) 2) it creates a space that non-commenters can visit to re-engage with
an exhibit or to investigate other visitors‟ experiences with an exhibit.

22. Nina Simon (2010) argues that engaged visitors who feel
valued by the institution are “more likely to visit
again, become members, renew their memberships, and
donate time and money to the institution.”

23. Allen-Greil and MacArthur (2010) report that the number of
users who communicate with their museum online “is growing
but still pales in comparison to the number who “lurk” or
make use of our static Web pages.” And they conclude
that, despite the low numbers of direct participants on their
museum‟s site, these projects should continue because of a
belief that “the benefits extend beyond just the relative few
who directly participate.”

24. The Challenge: 90-9-1
The data on online interaction with museums seems to
validate Jakob Neilson‟s observation (2006) that “90% of
users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don‟t contribute),”
“9% of users contribute from time to time, but other
priorities dominate their time,” and only “1% of users
participate a lot and account for most contributions.”
The Solution:
Simple.
Turn lurkers into participants.
What, not so simple?

25. Everyone‟s becoming a curator

26. Turning lurkers into participants
through encouraging curation and rating

27. Using design to promote participation

28. The tldr Interface

29. U.S. Dept. of State: Opinion Space

30. People who have seen this exhibit are ready to embrace the museum as a
forum, and users of the website can become themselves become editors and
narrators of the forum material.
The writers seek knowledge and feel empowered by the museum to add their
own information and reaction to the exhibit narrative.
These writers demonstrate through these comments that they want to become
actors in the narrative they‟re adding themselves to or rejecting in favor of other
narratives.
The use of new media, with its implication that visitor voices deserve to ascend
the stage in a formal virtual environment, shows us how prepared the audience is
to offer a supplementary Taranaki Wars narrative and potentially enter into a
more active discussion with others. Puke Ariki has given these voices a forum
and has implicitly acknowledged the value of this user-directed narrative.

31. Back to Puke Ariki

32. The Big Picture

33. The threaded (dreaded?) message board

35. The number of prompts, the general nature of the first forum (The Big
Picture), and the overlap of topic material might not have been a
concern if the message boards had had heavy numbers of users.
However, the total of 1273 comments, with 57 (6%) comments removed
by moderation, is notable both because the board was open for almost 5
months and because only 88 (7.4%) of the comments were in response
to other comments.
Of that 88, 20 were removed by moderation, or almost 23%. Threaded
comment forum setup carries with it the expectation that people will
interact with each other. The “What If ?” forums generated initial
statements, but few users chose to respond to these initial statements
even though they had the opportunity.

36. “Even in an irreverent community like
Slashdot, “I-statements” are indicators of good
content and civility matters” (Brennan, Wrazien
and Greenstadt 2010).

37. Part of the answer: Scaffolding!

38. From museums to online news
sites, we‟re realizing users need
scaffolding:
Simon (2010) points out, “The best participatory
experiences are not wide open. They are scaffolded to
help people feel comfortable engaging in the activity.”
In a discussion about existing newspaper comment
areas, Stijn Debrouwere (2011) writes that “We're giving
readers a blank canvas: a text area and a general
instruction to „respond to this story.‟” He argues that
this indeterminate invitation contributes to the current
unsatisfactory state of online comments and argues that
“We need to change the language that invites readers
into the conversation to reflect what the story is about.”

39. Beyond Comment Threads: The winners

40. Tagul

41. Designs should allow museum viewers to grasp the
major conversations inspired by the exhibit. These
designs can be adapted to reflect the institution‟s
goals and exhibit-specific content:
• A non-linear
platform, one that uses
design elements that
complement and incorporate
the artwork associated with
the exhibit or institution.

42. Relating user identification
to the institution
• Museum collection-inspired icons for commenters: Users should
be able to create user names and display profile icons that have
connections to both their identities and the museum. From an
easily searched thumbnail list of objects in the museum
collection, users can select an icon that will be displayed along with
their comments. Visitors can then see connections they share with
other users, possibly facilitating goodwill between visitors who
admire the same museum objects. The goal is to keep the museum
collection, exhibits, and experience as central to how a user
identifies himself or herself on the museum-hosted forum site.

43. • Give users a way to pull in visual or linked content from a
central museum-hosted exhibit site: Each exhibit‟s online
offerings should include easily linked
material, images, charts, videos, that a user may feel supports
his/her comment. A click and drag mechanism might
automatically insert a link and add text to a comment such as
“Go here to see what I‟m talking about.”
• Curatorial roles for lurkers: Simon (2010) points out that
“there are many more people who enjoy spectating and
critiquing content than there are those who enjoy creating it.”
Simple instructions might ask for help in ranking comments
“most helpful” or “best museum links.”

44. And most importantly:
• Emphasize storytelling: Questions and
prompts that begin discussions should
seek to identify the stories presented by
the museum and encourage visitors to
respond to these narratives with stories
of their own.

45. Keep the museum central
Such design guidelines would allow the community a vibrant
place in which to talk about museum visits and to see what
others thought of an exhibit's message and
implications, resulting in a greater connection to the
institution for commenters and lurkers.
Design and linguistic prompts should keep the museum
central to the forum‟s users; a museum exhibit comment area
should use the museum as a reflection of community and
cultural identities and offer users a way to declare their own
identities and communicate with others.