Page 157 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

146 • Sport, Media and Society

along these dimensions. The types of sport featured in the museum also inform the
interaction between visitors and the museum’s exhibitions. An analysis of museums,
therefore, must incorporate strategies for unravelling the perspectives and frame-
works embedded within their apparatuses and technologies as well as exploring the
potential subjectivities afforded to the visitor.

Case Study: The Apparatuses and Technologies
of the National Football Museum

Football is an important part of England’s heritage, our way of life and sense of identity.
The National Football Museum collects, preserves and interprets this unique heritage for
the public benefi t.

—Souvenir Guide

The football museum is attached to Deepdale Stadium, the home of Preston North
End Football Club, the ‘first winner of the world’s first professional league in 1889’.

It is visually and materially connected to the contemporary world of football through
this external architecture as well as through a viewing area inside that overlooks the
inside of the stadium. This connection is also embedded within its invitation to the
visitor: ‘you are about to embark on a fascinating journey through the history of
England’s national sport, charting its progress from humble beginnings to a present
day national obsession.’
The museum is separated into two halves, discursively replicating the temporal
dimensions of the game. The fi rst half is a gallery providing the history of football.
Visitors are directed down a corridor taking them on ‘an emotive journey back in
time’. The left side of the corridor is called ‘The Big Picture’ and focuses on images
of the social context within historical decades back to the late nineteenth century.
Opposite, on the right side, is a display titled ‘A Fan’s Life’, documenting the fan’s
perspective within each historical period.
The journey, therefore, begins by inviting the visitor to share the subject position

of the present-day fan—which may provide a feeling of identification with the im-

ages and issues on display. At the end of the first section, the visitor to the museum
has moved back in time to the early days of the sport and an exhibit called ‘In the Be-
ginning’, which looks at ancient ballgames which prefigured football. At this point,

the visitor is directed towards the second part of the gallery. On the right-hand side,
‘The Greatest Game’ provides a ‘narrative history’ of the development of football

through time using ‘stories, pictures, objects, film and sound’. The left-hand side
houses ‘The Real Things’: a glassed-in display of artefacts that is reportedly ‘the
length of a football pitch’.

Visitors experience an overflow of images, sights and sounds as they move through
the space of the corridor. The walls are a collage of images and quotations, embedded