Page 158 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

Sport, Media and Visual Culture • 147

cabinets containing artefacts and TV screens playing matches and newsreels. The
pastiche of quotes, facts, brief stories, displays and interactive exhibits invites visi-
tors to engage with whatever they wish. Occasional holes in the wall allow the visitor
glimpses of other sections of the gallery. It is a departure from museums that display
individual, carefully labelled, ordered and interpreted exhibits. The images displayed
on ‘The Big Picture’ side are large, framed individually, and separated from each

other. They are illuminated from behind and glow brightly first in colour and then, in
earlier eras, in black and white. The other displays in ‘A Fan’s Life’ and ‘The Great-
est Game’ are a montage of sights, sounds and artefacts. There is no space between
pictures; images overlap; quotations, stories and labels are imposed across the images;
occasionally, there are displays in glass cabinets within the walls; and TV screens play
famous moments from football history. While the walls show a degree of organisation
within historical periods, the themes, issues and events are interspersed. Different
music or snippets of broadcasts play as you move around the space, sometimes over-
lapping as you walk between sections of the exhibit.
The segment of ‘The Big Picture’ display which presented the social context of
the 1990s incorporates the following images: British Prime Minister Tony Blair and
former England football manager Kevin Keegan standing together with each heading

ANALYSING THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL MUSEUM
Our analysis of the museum focused on the ways that apparatuses and technologies are used to
create and display the museum’s version of the past and present of football. Prior to visiting the
museum, we developed a guide to analysis which detailed a range of features of apparatuses and
technologies of museums that we could observe and consider. These included the broad categories
of apparatuses, technologies of display, textual and visual technologies of interpretation, technologies
of layout, spaces behind displays, shops/café and the visitor. We also detailed specifi c characteris-
tics within each of these broader categories. For example, within textual and visual technologies of
interpretation, we identifi ed the following subcategories: labels and captions, panels, catalogues,
multimedia/intersensory experiences, visual technologies and audio technologies. Each of these sub-
categories was also explicitly defi ned. A fundamental aspect of the analysis was to try to understand
how social subjectivities and claims to truth were produced through the use of apparatuses and
technologies. To contextualise our fi ndings, we also considered preferred meanings, examples of
intertexuality and silences.
We used a combination of note-taking, photographs and documents to analyse the museum. The
data collection began with the exterior of the museum and then an exploration of the interior design
and layout. We started by walking through the museum following the prescribed route and taking
brief notes about the displays, the organisation, the images, objects, sounds and texts in relation to
our identifi ed analytical categories. We also observed other visitors and the way that they moved
through the space and engaged with the exhibits. After walking through the museum and experienc-
ing the melange of images, artefacts, audio-visual displays and interactive exhibits, we went to the
museum café and discussed our impressions and notes in relation to the characteristics of technolo-
gies and apparatuses. We decided to focus our case study on the fi rst half of the museum and went
through again, taking photographs and detailed notes about the exhibits.