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#DayofFacts: Taking a Stand to Share Our Truths [MuseumNext USA 2017]
- 1. Taking a Stand to Share Our Truths Alli Hartley & Mara Kurlandsky MuseumNext Portland 2017
- 2. MuseumNext Portland 2017 #DayofFacts
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- 10. MuseumNext Portland 2017 #DayofFacts dayoffacts.org
- 11. Revolutions start with a toolkit: ● Data on how the public perceives museums ● Suggestions for what to post ● Other participants willing to be identified ● Best practices on social media ● What to do if you meet a troll MuseumNext Portland 2017 #DayofFacts
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- 16. ● 350 institutions on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook ● Nearly 50K Tweets & Instagrams using the hashtag ● ≈ 1,500 Tweets related to the campaign ● ≈ 475 Instagrams related to the campaign ● ≈ 200 Facebook posts relating to the campaign ● #DayofFacts trended on Twitter for several hours ● @DayofFacts finished with over 3,000 Twitter followers MuseumNext Portland 2017 #DayofFacts
- 18. “We saw a huge jump in the amount of engagement on our page from #DayofFacts. We focused our posts on immigration to our area and on many posts saw people sharing their own family stories about immigrating to the United States.”—W.K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas “We had an overwhelmingly positive response to our involvement, and saw engagement from a couple of our fellow Chicago institutions, too. It was a great experience and we saw tremendous engagement.”—Chicago Academy of Sciences “Our #DayofFacts posts really resonated with people. We saw huge spikes in both engagement and followers during the day and after.”—Newberry Library 70% of survey respondents said that their #DayofFacts posts received more engagement than usual MuseumNext Portland 2017 #DayofFacts
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- 20. Participants by state and by country MuseumNext Portland 2017 #DayofFacts
- 21. “Thank you for organizing the event; it helped me push our institution to become more relevant in the stories we tell.”—W.K. Gordon Center “This initiative seemed very effective in underscoring our museum’s commitment to inclusiveness and integrity…”—Noguchi Museum “It was a positive and affirming way to network and show solidarity....”— Job Carr Cabin Museum “The event empowered my colleagues and me to take a stand for information and facts during a time when we wanted to do something but weren’t quite sure what to do.”—Gustavus Adolphus College “This was, for us, a great exercise in truth and fact-telling as we move forward in re-interpreting our complex past as a historic house museum and former country estate.”—Reynolda House Museum “Thank you for organizing so our collective voices could rise up and be heard. What an impact we made together.” — Riverside Art Museum MuseumNext Portland 2017 #DayofFacts
- 22. MuseumNext Portland 2017 #DayofFacts
- 23. MuseumNext Portland 2017 #DayofFacts And those are the facts. Thank you! Alli Hartley @allihartley1 Mara Kurlandsky @mkurlandsky Visit dayoffacts.org to see the full archive + media coverage
Editor's Notes
- SLIDE 1 Mara: On February 17, this past spring, over 350 cultural organizations — museums, libraries, archives, science centers, and educational groups — asserted their role as champions of knowledge and facts to share thousands of posts on social media, By the end of the day, the hashtag #DayofFacts had been trending for hours, and the surge of posts had been covered in news outlets from the Washington Post, to the Huffington Post, to Mashable.
- SLIDE 2 Mara: Participants in this global uprising shared truths about immigration, climate change, refugees, and much more; the kinds of facts that the new presidential administration, inaugurated on January 20, might deem “alternative.”
- SLIDE 3 Mara: The campaign was not organized by an institution, or by paid consultants, but rather by two individuals, emerging museum professionals who were interested in the relevance of museums to the current political moment and eager to do something about what was happening. I’m Mara Kurlandsky, and I was one of the coordinators of #DayofFacts, and I’m here with Alli Hartley, my co-organizer. In this presentation, we will share the philosophy and goals behind the campaign, how we made it happen, and evaluate of the success of this type of action. Alli will start us off by explaining a bit about the background of the start of the campaign:
- SLIDE 4 Alli: On January 29, 2017, I was scrolling through Twitter in despair- something I, like many of us, had done with alarming frequency since November 9, 2016, and a habit I had picked up even more earnestly since January 20, 2017. Since January 2017 feels like it was a million years ago, let me refresh you on the news that week: The National Park Service had been compelled to delete and apologize for a retweet comparing the size of Donald Trump’s inauguration crowds to those of former President Obama’s. The Park Service as a whole was barred from tweeting for several days.
- SLIDE 5 Alli: A boat had capsized in Malaysia, one U.S. soldier was killed in Yemen, and Donald Trump surprise signed into order “the travel ban.” Amid the chaos, the protests, the individual stories of suffering that I saw as I refreshed my Twitter feed, two particular Tweets stood out.
- SLIDE 6 Alli: This post about the Japanese-American incarceration was striking for many reasons. First, it was completely mission-related and presented as factual, unquestionable information: an entirely appropriate post for the Park to make. Second, it provided a historical example that paralleled the current political moment, and which clearly resonated with the public. It quickly shot to the most popular post on the page, re-tweeted and liked by thousands, only surpassed by a similar post later that day.
- SLIDE 7 Alli: The St. Louis Manifest project also did the same. Since January, the project has been tweeting out information about the Jewish refugees on the German liner the St. Louis who were turned away from entering Cuba and the United States, many of whom perished in the Holocaust, and within hours of launching it had over 11,000 followers (today, the project has over 67 thousand followers). These tweets were brilliant, poignant, honest, relevant, and they demonstrated the important role our institutions can play--without lying or distorting facts, but by simply connecting a historical moment to the current day. They were connecting with a huge amount of people, and they were illustrative of the powerful role that knowledge and truth could play for institutions brave enough to speak them. We wondered what would happen if cultural and scientific institutions all shared information like this on one day, in one concentrated effort. Thus #DayofFacts was born. Mara: Our goal was simple: we wanted to show that museums wouldn’t just bow to pressure preemptively and self-censor historical facts or avoid controversial topics just because of a change in political administration. It would be a field-wide act of solidarity for the truth and the educational value of museums.
- SLIDE 8 Mara: So how do you go about creating a multi-institutional social media campaign that touches not only hundreds of institutions, but hundreds of visitors as well? An invaluable tool in pulling together a successful social media event was the inspiring network of social justice-oriented brave museum professionals that has emerged within the museum community over the past few years, many of whom are also here at MuseumNext. Our colleagues in the field have been unafraid to push our field forward with conversations and actions on issues such as police brutality, institutional racism, equity and inclusion, labor issues and the roles of museums in society. They provided us not only with the critical frameworks to help us rationalize the role museums have in societies during periods of civil strife, but the networks to turn our ideas into a reality. It seems fitting that Alli and I actually first met a few years ago during meetings of the Washington DC Museum Workers Speak chapter.
- SLIDE 9 Alli: As a museum educator, I had experience pulling together communities of volunteers and communities of learners, and I had facilitated discussions and online Tweet chats before, but I had never facilitated an online project of this scale. Since I had an idea that I was passionate about, but not the expertise to pull something like this off in the short time scale that the new pace of the media and current events dictated, I turned to my network for a collaborator. I wrote a post with my idea in the International Museum Social Media Manager’s Facebook group and tagged Mara hoping she’d see it. Because of her previous experience organizing a large multi-institutional social media campaign (perhaps you’ve heard of #5WomenArtists) I knew she had the skills to help me realize this project. And more importantly, because we had first met and shared ideas around museums as sites of social action, I knew our ideas were aligned, and that we respected each other enough to be able to fully engage and dialogue and really develop these ideas. Mara: I saw Alli’s call on Facebook right in the middle of an event I had gone to about Art and Activism after the election. It’s no secret that my own political viewpoints lean pretty liberal and progressive. I was devastated by the results of the election, and scared by what I perceived as almost immediate censorship of cultural organizations because of the Park Service incident. I went to the event was looking for direction, or comfort, but the panel of artists and activists were just as overwhelmed as me. I’ll confess that I got bored and started scrolling through Facebook...when I saw Alli’s message I thought: this is what I can do. After coming together, we knew we first had to engage with other institutions to see if they’d also be on board, or if this was just a crazy idea two renegade museum professionals had come up with.
- SLIDE 10 Mara: We created a sign-up sheet to gauge interest and contacts, and to gain some insight into what museums were thinking of our emerging ideas. Many people recommended that we forgo a museum-specific hashtag in favor of something more inclusive, and that proved to be critical. Alli: At this point, when we were still formulating the ideas with the help of our community, Mara and I took our emerging ideas to some of the mentors and leaders in our field. We knew that in order for this campaign to be successful, it couldn’t just be us and our friends. Building upon connections built through our previous activism, we approached leaders in the field and our mentors for specific feedback. When we first approached our mentors and people we looked up to for feedback, it wasn’t all positive. Because this campaign came from a place of deep emotion and anger at the situation our country was in, the initial language of the campaign materials we produced were definitely off-putting to potential participants. Our mentors challenged us through our thinking and their insights encouraged it to look at the issue from different perspectives: • Were there good reasons some museums were hesitant to participate? • Will we squander the goodwill of museum supporters by appearing too political? • Is museum authority/public trust really in doubt? Once we had refined our philosophy and materials, our mentors helped amplify our voices--such as Laura Lott of the American Alliance of Museums, who opened up AAM blogging platforms to our voices and shared with her colleagues. We created a website so that we could spread the word far and wide, and publicly articulate what we were trying to do. From this experience, we learned another lesson here from organizing a revolution: ask for feedback--even if you don’t want it.
- SLIDE 11 Mara: After compiling a digital toolkit with suggested campaign materials, based on the many questions we got about “what should I post?” we then shared it widely. Our toolkit included supporting data, participating institutions, lose content suggestions, best practices and suggestions for individuals who may be newer to social media, and guidelines for dealing if the trolls came out (spoiler alert: they did). From that point, we were able to build momentum. One of the most surprising things was the sheer number of non-museum participants--we had tapped into a whole world of professionals at educational institutions looking to make a difference.
- SLIDE 22 Alli: When you’re holding a party, one question that you always get is: “Who else is coming to the party?” Because some institutions saw taking a political stand as potentially risky, institutions felt there was safety in numbers--and in prestige. As big-name institutions like the National Aquarium, the Newseum, and the Field Museum began sharing previews of their content, momentum started building around the campaign. With AAM’s guidance and on their platforms, we produced blog posts to share our philosophy and better get the word out. Also, more importantly, in the lead-up to the campaign, participants also began sharing their rationale for participating in blog posts. For us as collaborators, this was a sign that our campaign was going to be big: that our collaborators were taking ownership over the project, enough to share their own individual rationales for participating. Mara: The night before the campaign, we had 280 institutional partners and a thousand followers on Twitter. We had fielded press inquiries from the Washington Post and the Chicago Sun-Times. We honestly weren’t sure how successful it would be though--up until that morning I was afraid it might be super lame!
- SLIDE 13 Mara: On February 17, the #DayofFacts campaign started early in the morning, east coast time--the first tweets came from some our UK supporters.
- SLIDE 14 Mara: The tweets started really picking up around 8am Eastern time. I thought I would just keep an eye on Twitter at work, but the morning of I decided to work from home….
- SLIDE 15 Mara: Which quickly turned into a sick day. The tweets came in faster and faster until #DayofFacts was trending in multiple US cities, and coming from small historical societies to mega art museums, zoos, aquariums, tons of public libraries, universities, even the UN Refugee Agency and Science Friday. The #DayofFacts was a bonafide success.
- SLIDE 16 Mara: Behind me, I have some statistics for the end of the day. As an organized form of resistance against alternative facts, #DayofFacts generated at least 50,000 tweets — it’s hard to say how many total, because the campaign broke the limit of our hashtag tracker by 4 p.m. By the end of the day, at least 350 organizations from 16 countries and 40 U.S. states had dropped knowledge into the social media stratosphere. The most popular content, a video produced by the Field Museum, had over a million views, and was the most viewed video on the Field Museum’s social feeds.
- SLIDE 17 Field Museum Video
- SLIDE 18 Mara: The reactions from participating institutions were exactly what we were hoping for: instead of getting called out for being “political,” many museums reported later in a survey that their online audience applauded their tweets and thanked them for speaking the truth and highlighting stories important to their communities. Some museums said that their tweets generated conversation and prompted members of their audiences to share their own stories, or that the campaign helped them connect with other local organizations over shared values. The vast majority of survey respondents reported that the campaign was not only a positive experience, but an affirming one for their institutions and missions.
- SLIDE 19 Alli: There were negative reactions though. The truth is that by our best estimates, somewhere around 2,000 of the tens of thousands of #DayofFacts posts were actually related to the intent of the campaign. Once the hashtag went viral, it was quickly co-opted and used to share the exact kind of unverified facts we were aiming to fight. I won’t share any of those specific tweets, but a look at parts of the the #DayofFacts word cloud, like #MediaLiesAgain, #MAGA and #FakeNews will give you sense. Many people expressed dismay that the concept of a Day of Facts would even be necessary, and saw it not as an inspirational campaign, but a sad symbol of our times. Because the hashtag was co-opted by trolls (and later, by organizations that were just sharing random facts), we have decided that no matter what actions we take in the future, they won’t use the #DayofFacts hashtag again.
- SLIDE 20 Alli: So how can we measure success of the campaign? One way is looking at the data we have on the 350 participating institutions. Mara and I came from art museums, and we started our outreach there. But in the end, participants came from organizations of all subject types, from history to science, to design, to libraries. In other data we collected, a lot of organizations found out about the campaign through our direct outreach efforts. But fully one quarter found out through word of mouth, an indication that there was a lot of organic interest in the campaign. A look at the geographic breakdown shows that not only were there plenty of international institutions eager to support truth, the campaign was actually fairly evenly distributed across US States. This was by no means a “blue-state” only action.
- SLIDE 21 Alli: The other way of measuring success is to look at participant’s feedback. The campaign successfully demonstrated the relevancy of museums as truth-tellers in the age of alternative facts, allowed museums to take a stand in the name of truth and factual content, and in the end, provided a framework to assert or reconnect with their own missions in a powerfully public way. The overwhelmingly positive response convinced us and others that standing up for truth in a mission-aligned way is not risky for institutions—in fact it’s becoming increasingly required.
- SLIDE 22 Mara: So what can we take away from #DayofFacts, and what comes next? Behind me I have the four stated goals of the campaign: 1) Reassure the public that museums will stay true to their missions, no matter the change in political administrations. 2) Encourage dialogue with the public--something museums already do--about issues that specifically affect them, in doing so acknowledge that museums aren’t immune to current events. 3) Help prove to the field as a whole that acknowledging current events doesn’t have to be controversial, and in fact can be beneficial and meaningful for relationships with visitors. 4) To encourage museums and cultural institutions to embrace social justice and empower them to speak out when our values are under attack. Based on the fact that campaign went viral, and from specific feedback from participants about their positive and meaningful experiences, we judge the campaign to be successful in the ways we intended. Alli: We see the work of social justice and revolutions in museums like a ladder. We first met participating in Museum Workers Speak, and then we built upon the social justice theories and engagements of activists who we’ve intersected with. The #DayofFacts was another rung, and that was a rung that was made successful not just by museum activists, but by institutions, many of whom were first experiencing this role as activists for truth, and the majority of whom said in an evaluation that they deemed their participation a success. The campaign was made successful based on the power of institutions who devoted their resources to making this successful. And while it was an honor to carry this banner for museums and we envision that our future work will engage in museum activism, it’s time for institutions to devote resources to this. The future of museum activism belongs to institutions who are willing to devote time, money and other resources to it. Mara: The political situation has continues to change rapidly since February, so it’s not only necessary be but even more critical for museums to be unafraid to share their truths, to build coalition with like-minded institutions, and to find ways that we can link and be stronger together, especially as the need grows to not only stand up for facts, but for the rights and safety of our visitors and patrons. While #DayofFacts is over, we hope that hearing our story and all the others at MuseumNext will inspire you to take action at home. Encourage your institution to stand up for the truth, for its visitors and patrons, and to never compromise its mission even in tumultuous times. These times require more bravery, both individual and institutional. It’s becoming increasingly clear that a museum disconnected from or unwilling to acknowledge current events is no longer a relevant museum.