Museum as a multimodal communication system

Miklošević, Željka. (2014). Museum as a multimodal communication system. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Information Science
Department of Information Science > Chair of museology and heritage management.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij informacijskih i komunikacijskih znanosti) [mentor Vujić, Žarka].

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Abstract

Considered part of a wider media landscape ever since it was founded and having the ability to communicate messages about culture and society in general, museums have been approached in this thesis as communication systems characterized by the use of multiple sorts of material meaning-making resources. As a dominant paradigm in today's museum context, primarily in relation to its users, meaning-making has been examined in the thesis within the social semiotic theory of multimodality. Multimodal analysis was applied to exhibitions at Zagreb museums as physical environments and museum guided tours as a form on interpersonal communication conditioned by the exhibition environment. The analysis formed the basis on which further research was conducted of experiences and opinions related to exhibitions and guided tours of both museum professionals and visitors to Zagreb museums. Hermeneutic phenomenology was used in order to gather rich data on personal experiences collected through interviews and then transcribed and analyzed. Interpretation of the data showed the current relationship of museums toward their visitors in terms of the type of knowledge they produce and social relationship they establish with the visitors. Based on this, museum multimodal system entails communication that is based on heritage objects, scientifically and professionally grounded, recorded and published, visually appealing, verbally interpreted, embodied, narrative, selective, relevant and adapted in genre and discourse to visitors. Social semiotics has been shown an appropriate method for analysing such relationships and has therefore been proposed as a possible museological methodology for an analysis of museum communication in general.

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