Due to critiques of museums using social media mainly to market their institutions, and the persistent but unfounded idealization of the participatory potential of social media, it is essential we investigate if/how museum staff realistically use social media for social inclusion initiatives. In this talk, drawing mainly on the observations I made during a social media ethnography at the Open Museum (Glasgow), we will discuss how museum staff can translate analogue outreach work to social platforms. Specifically, staff draw on certain affordances of social media and mitigate others to uphold outreach work, a practice I frame with a lens of ‘infrastructures’.

Infrastructures can be conceptualized as ‘institutionalized complexes’ encompassing routine social practices and the relationships between the organization of work, standards, technology, and norms but also, systems created by staff to do their everyday work. The practices, tools, and technologies staff draw together in outreach work at the Open Museum creates a certain infrastructure that can hinder the use of social media. However, in the context of COVID-19, institutions were pressured to shift their practices online. Based on observations made at the Open Museum and three other cases, I illuminate how staff try to translate socially driven practices to social media, potentially forming new digital infrastructures for social inclusion work. In doing so, I ask attendees if museums should remain on social media and if so, what practices should be prioritized?