ABSTRACT
Many museums have in recent years opened up their digital collection databases and begun using social media to interact with audiences. This development seems part of a redistribution of the power over collections. In Nordic cultural policy, the connection between digital technology and democracy, access, and inclusion goes back some twenty years, and is associated with the movement ‘history from below’ (Hylland 2014, 2017). Current changes are guided by national and European cultural policies, stimulated by an international community of digital museum practitioners (Drotner and Schrøder 2013), and pursued by entrepreneurial initiatives at particular museums (Axelsson and Wittgren 2017). In countries such as the United Kingdom, digital technology is on the verge of being normative, that is, considered as a means that museums ought to use to achieve strategic goals regarding collection management, accessibility, education, and marketing (Parry 2013).
