With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies and increasing development of many-to-many communication standards, universal museums engaged in a profound disclosure of their organisational contents, as well as an intense rethinking of their interaction strategies towards virtual audiences. Multiplying entries on artworks, pedagogic applications, information about events or transactional sections, universal museums display henceforth an unprecedented assiduity to implicate their online followers in the elaboration of responsive and multilateral institutions in the Web 2.0 era.
The research object of this Master Thesis is to determine the eventual incidence of universal museums websites and related social media channels on the construction of a new dialogue between institutions and their online visitors, redefining the collaborative, conversational, and participative dimension of virtual audiences. A comparative focus has been put on two different universal museums: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the New York MET. We propose an in-depth analysis of their respective Web 2.0 platforms and strategies to reflect on the problem.