The Evolution of forms of cultural mediation in the digital age in museums, between tradition and change

This paper studies the dynamics of linkage between cultural communication and innovative digital technologies. We hypothesize that the study of the communication policies, publishing practices and digital publication of museums can provide a way to analyze recent developments in forms of mediation of works and their related contents. A quantitative analysis of these different aspects has been carried out on several European and North-American museums. For this purpose, two corpora have been built: one corpus of conferences and international professional reports (2011-2013) and one corpus consisting of the institutional communication, production and digital publishing practices of museums that are actively involved in the digital field. Findings show that the rationale of the social appropriation of digital media is situated in long-term historical and socio-cultural frameworks. In their cultural mediation practices, museums rely on what we have called a 'digital information ecosystem': the arrangement of socio-technical devices and the representations of works of art, texts or discourses that are associated with them. In these frameworks, forms of mediation vary between tradition and innovation. In conclusion, the building of a 'digital information ecosystem', rooted in social and cultural frameworks, reveals the social appropriation of digital technologies by museums