Repairing online spaces for “safe” outreach with older adults

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite the widely recognized importance in the museum sector of cultivating safe, welcoming spaces for projects that work towards social change, few studies consider how feelings of safety can be cultivated online. To provide insight for future museum practices, this study focuses on a series of collaborative sessions facilitated by a museum outreach institution and a social enterprise to provide online engagement activities for older adults during COVID-19. Employing a social media ethnography, this study reveals how staff can create feelings of safety online through repair processes that work around, with, and against the unethical and contradictory bounds of online infrastructures.