DMA Friends: the mobilization of statistics in a media innovation experiment in the museum sector

• Main Author: GERMAN Ronan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Etudes Scientifiques Spécialisées Appliquées aux Communications Humaines, Economiques, Sociales et Symboliques 2016-07-01
• Series: Essachess
• Subjects: media semiology; policy instruments; statistical rationality; informatized media; art museum
• Online Access: http://essachess.com/index.php/jcs/article/view/323/374

On January 23, 2013, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) returned to free general admission. This announcement coincided with the official launching of two programs: DMA Friends, a loyalty program, and DMA Partners, a membership program which is free of charge. The aim of this article is to propose an analysis, at the crossroads of media semiology, of political science and the historical sociology of statistical rationality, with a view to studying the ways in which the DMA Friends program designers have mobilized the statistical argument to justify the soundness of their approach. In order to do so, they leaned on a range of media forms generated by a sophisticated techno-semiotic apparatus which represents, in a statistical form, the behavior of visitors inside the museum. The program (and the whole instrumentation that sustains it) illustrates a media innovation experiment in the museum sector that questions the ways by which the statistical work is mediated according to the communicational situations in which it is mobilized and enhanced.