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Is crowdsourcing ‘democratic’?

You might think that museums, forced by budget cuts, have looked for ways to work faster, cheaper or easier. That does not seem to be the case. By crowdsourcing, the museum can tap into many sources in the short term, but managing the relationships and the material requires more manpower than a traditional exhibition, made by a curator.

Social involvement

Museums also have other reasons to seek participation. They do this primarily to involve the public more in the museum and to reach new target groups. And conversely, the museum also becomes more involved in society through participation. This social involvement is a desire that museums have cherished long before crowdsourcing and participation came into being. From the 1960s and 1970s onwards, the idea grew that art and culture had become too elitist. It should not only be for the people, but also of the people. The image of the museum as a temple of high culture and good taste  russia phone number list (see above) had to be overhauled. At the same time, historians and readers became interested in ‘microhistoire’ or ‘petite histoire’, in which the history of the anonymous lower classes is told using individual stories. A well-known example of this is ‘Montaillou’ by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladourie.

Audience participation fits well

A with these ideals. The museum shows that it is modern and that it is in the middle of society. And in this way crowdsourcing also becomes a marketing tool, as Jasper Visser notes in a recent post on his blog. Jasper Visser works for the National Historical Museum . This museum has seen it as one of its tasks from the beginning to enable everyone to tell his or her story. The fact that it will remain a virtual museum for the time being is not so bad in that respect.

Crowdsourcing is a somewhat unfortunate name, which is mainly inspired by the rhyme with ‘outsourcing’. Crowd suggests that the entire mass has thought along, that the result is ‘democratic’. And of course that is not the case. First of all, the audience that  american samoa business directory responds to the call will not be a fair reflection of the population. It is expected that contributions will largely come from 2 groups:  Is crowdsourcing  the google pixel pro 9 xl’s aborted underwater mode test  regular audience of the museum and groups that are involved with the specific subject of a project.

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