?Ja, det är ju de det handlar om, det är ju kommunikation, annars kan man ju låta bli.?
-en studie om kulturhistoriska museers syn på kommunikation i utställningssituationer
Cultural-historical museumExhibitionCommunicationShannon & WeaverEncoding/decodingParticipation culture
Purpose/Aim: Exhibitions in cultural-historical museums have traditionally been object-centered and associated with one-way communication. The aim of this thesis is to gain knowledge about how exhibition producers ? and educationalists at swedish cultural-historical museums today relate to communication in exhibitions from a communication scientific perspective.Material/Method: The method of the thesis is interviews exhibition producers ? and educationalists at five swedish cultural-historical museums about how they work with communication issues in exhibitions. The empiricism gained from the interviews have been analyzed from a communication scientific angle, using two communication theories as idealtypes for communication processes; Shannon and Weaver´s model and Stuart Hall´s encoding/decoding-theory.Main results: Communication in exhibitions have developed, much due to the use of more channels for communicating with the visitors and the acknowledgement of the visitor as an active subject in interpreting the exhibitions and their message.Despite this development, communication in exhibitions still have features of a one-way communication. The main feature is the lack of possibilities for visitors to communicate their interpretations and point of views of the exhibition back to the exhibition producers. This leaves the visitors more or less passive in the communication process that is taking place in exhibitions in the same way that the model for communication by Shannon and Weaver describes.