MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATION OF BRITISH MUSEUMS ON FACEBOOK

Abstract

The article is devoted to social media activity of leading British museums, content strategies they implement to share the news and information via multimodal discourse. Museums social media accounts became a significant component of modern online landscape, in particular, during COVID-19 pandemic when millions of people worldwide started looking for some extracurricular recreation, cultural and aesthetic impressions. The pandemic was both, a challenge and an impetus for many museums to increase online presence and intensify their activity on social media. Having faced the closure during the lockdown many museums had to transform their communication on websites and Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to keep in touch with their followers, visitors and members, to inform, educate and entertain the digital audience. Modern technologies helped museums to diversify modes and media, to make social media posts and virtual communication with followers multimodal, to disseminate knowledge in new ways. Leading British museums turned out to be highly innovative and creative and set multimodality. standards in museums communication. Facebook remains the most popular social media platform for museums so the content of Facebook accounts of Madame Tussauds Museum, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum in 2021-2022 was analyzed in terms of multimodality, communication strategies, edutainment, use of elements characteristic of online communication such as hashtags, emoji, conversation style, dialogic principles, user-generated content. Сontent strategies of British museums in Facebook vary depending on their profile. Edutainment, games, puzzles, quizes, light-hearted communication provoke more response, more emotional reaction of followers as well as their engagement into discussions and dialogues, interactive experience.