He examined the Instagram accounts of all 8 Battleship museums and conducted an analysis on how they are portrayed as tourist destinations and memorials on Instagram. He then compared the results to a couple of key schools of thought regarding historical experiences and museum ships: Continuous Existence, and Staged Authenticity.
Kevin L. Trushenski
University of Wisconsin Eau Claire Department of Geography and Anthropology
December 7, 2017
Introduction
Historical museums are places that preserve history and interpret it for a broad range of audiences (Byrd 2017). Museums come in all shapes and sizes, including floating museums. These floating museums are known as museum ships. Museum ships are ships that have been preserved and restored and allow visitors to actually step aboard and explore different parts of the ship. Museum ships are intended to take people back in time
by allowing visitors to actually walk where the sailors walked and see firsthand where history took place.
The concept of Place is very prevalent aboard museum ships. This means that there are meanings associated with a location that people identify with (Zeitler 2013). While the ship may appear as simply a location to many, to others the ship has meanings associated with it that they identify with. This could be a historical meaning, such as the memories of the sailors who called the ship their home, or a more contemporary meaning, such as the visitors engaging in experiences with the museum that give the ship a meaning to them. The museums are designed to preserve the significance of the ships, thus making Place a very central concept. The concept of Human-Environment Relationships is the way humans interact with the physical world (Zeitler 2013). In the
context of museum ships, the environment is the ship itself. The museum curators interpret how people interacted with the ship historically, as well as how they interact with it presently. It is these interactions between humans and their environment that really give the ships meaning. Without the people, the ships would just be floating hunks of wood or metal.
There are all kinds of museum ships, ranging from old cargo ships to former Naval warships. In the United States, there are more warships that have been preserved as museums than in the rest of the world combined (St. Jacques 2000). The U.S. Navy has donated numerous types of warships to museum foundations over the years. Some that have been donated to museums over the years include PT boats, minesweepers, submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers, and battleships. In this paper I will focus on the battleships that have been converted into museums. There are 8 battleships that the Navy has donated to be used as museums: Alabama, North Carolina, Texas, Missouri, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Iowa, and Wisconsin. These are located in coastal towns throughout the country, most commonly found along the east coast (Figure 1).
Tourist attractions often use social media outlets as a form of promotion to attract visitors. The purpose of this study is to examine how and to what extent U.S. Naval Battleship museums promote themselves for tourism on Instagram. Content analysis is the primary method employed throughout this study to interpret ships’ respective Instagram accounts. There are two concepts that are crucial to this study: staged authenticity and continuous existence.
According to a study conducted by Chhabra (2003), visitors to historical and heritage attractions want an experience that feels authentic to them. Staged authenticity pays homage to the “original” concept and caters to nostalgia for old ways of life (Chhabra 2003). In this case, the original concept is a naval warship and the lives of the sailors on board. Chhabra (2003) notes that with staged authenticity, accuracy is not necessarily
important. It is the perception it gives people that matters the most.
Continuous existence is a concept very relevant to tourism aboard museum ships (Byrd 2017). The focus of this method of interpretation is to keep the ships relevant in the modern era, even as the gap widens between the modern era and the period deemed to be of most historical significance. This method doesn’t abandon the period of historical significance but rather uses it as a starting point to tell the ship’s story, up through the present day. Byrd (2017) mentions that a common problem with museum ships is that people are no longer finding them as relevant to visit as they once did. This happens when the ship is fixed in one point in its long history and the rest of the ship’s history is overlooked. Byrd’s research aboard the SS John W. Brown showed that people were much more interested in learning about the entire history of the ship and, because its continuous evolution was being acknowledged, people were more inclined to come back. The continuous existence approach has been noticed aboard the battleship North
Carolina as well. This site serves as both a memorial to soldiers that served in World War II, as well as an actively functioning museum (Scheu 1996). The shift from the original memorial identity towards that of family-friendly museum and tourist destination has helped North Carolina increase visitation, as well as gain more revenues from admission, gift shop sales, and special programming (Wallace 2010).
Photographs are commonly used across a variety of mediums for promotional purposes throughout the tourism industry (Hunter 2007). A quantitative method to analyze photographs is known as content analysis. Content analysis involves categorizing images and text in order to attempt to discover trends in themes represented in the materials. Hunter (2007) has detailed many instances where content analysis has been used for tourism studies. He notes that many of these cases were analyses of destination specific materials but he has developed a method that can be applied to the materials for the promotion of any destination. This will be explained further in the following section.
Methods
While there are many variations of the methods for using content analysis as a research tool, there are a few aspects of the methods that remain constant. The first method that is essential to content analysis is the development of coding categories. Hunter (2007) notes that these categories should be exhaustive, meaning they cover the entire range of the content, mutually exclusive, meaning there is not overlap where an object could fit into multiple categories, and universal, meaning they can work in the context of more than just one specific situation. Hunter (2007) suggests that the categories be broken down into representations by space and subject. His spatial categories, referring to the physical tourism environment, were broken down into the following: natural landscapes, cultivated landscapes, heritage and material culture, and tourism products. His subject categories, referring to the people present in the photographs, include the following: no human subject, host only, guest only, and host and guest.
Choosing a sampling strategy is another key step in the content analysis process. While there are many different sampling strategies to choose from, they must be a manageable size, randomly selected, and exhaustive of the entire range of data (Kassarjian 1977). A few popular sampling methods include random, interval (systemic), cluster, and multistage sampling (stratified) (Kassarjian 1977). In this study, Hunter’s (2007) system of creating categories based on space and subject was used. The spatial categories created refer to the way the physical environment was presented in each Instagram photo. These categories include continuous existence, staged authenticity, and historical photos. Photos that fall into the category of continuous existence include photos that show the ship in context as a museum (Figure 2). Within that definition are photos that show restoration projects in progress, as well as the ship being used for an event or advertisements for events. Historical photos are photos that are from when the ship was in action, before it became a museum (Figure 3). These photos include the broad views of the ship underway, as well as photos of the daily lives of the sailors aboard. The staged authenticity category includes photos of reenactments aboard the ship, restored compartments on the ship, or generic views of the ship for non-event purposes (Figure 4).
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The representation by subject categories follow closely with those created by Hunter (2007). These categories begin with the no human subject category (Figure 5). The guests category includes photos of tourists and retired veterans that are visiting the ship (Figure 6). The hosts category includes employees, volunteers, and people that are working at or are in charge of events aboard the ship (Figure 7). The host and guest category includes any combination of people from the above categories (Figure 8). An additional subject category was needed to include historical subjects (Figure 9). These photos are the historical photos that include people from before the ship was used as a museum and are not just a broad view of the ship.
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For this study, a modified form of the interval/systemic sampling strategy was used (Kassarjian 1977). For each battleship Instagram page, 30 photos were analyzed when possible. This number was chosen to ensure there was a large enough sample size to generate relevant data and to keep the sample the same size for each ship. To determine which photos to analyze, the total number of photos in the account at the time of the study was divided by 3 to account for Instagram’s 3-column display (Figure 10). The resulting number was then divided by 30 in order to determine how many rows to skip. The photos analyzed in this study were the ones in column 1 of the rows that were determined by the mathematical procedure described above.
Results
The results of this study show variation between each battleship museum. The representations by space show that many of the museums aim their focus toward showing photos of continuous existence or historical photos (Figure 11). In the representations by subject category, it is most common to see photos with no human subjects (Figure 12). Overall, each battleship yielded very unique results.
The USS Alabama’s Instagram account is very heavily focused on promotion through continuous existence. 1/3 of the photos analyzed depicted continuous existence content. There were also 8 photos of staged authenticity. This means that this ship’s Instagram account is focused very little on historical photographs and focused more on what is happening aboard the ship in its current day to day operations. In regard to the representations by subject, the majority of the photos feature no human subjects, but there are at least 2 photos in all of the categories.
The USS Iowa’s Instagram account displays a fairly even spread of photos in all 3 of the spatial categories. However, it overwhelmingly features photos with no human subjects. This is interesting because it is presented as a more pristine picturesque area where tourists can visit the ship and get pictures without the interference of other visitors.
The USS Massachusetts’s account is similar to the Alabama’s in which it’s Instagram account is mostly focused on continuous existence photos, with some staged authenticity, and minimal historical photos. While the most predominant subject category is no human subject, overall the account features more photos with people than without people. This helps show that it is a place people do actually visit and it provides some context to
viewers as to what visiting the museum may actually be like.
The majority of the photos on the Instagram account for the USS Missouri are continuous existence-themed. There are a few that are staged authenticity or historical depictions as well. The vast majority of the photos on this ship feature no human subjects. This is because a lot of the pictures frame the ship in the context of its location in Pearl Harbor. Some of the photos focus more on the nearby memorial to the USS
Arizona and did so in a very reverent way. Many of the historical photos shown depict the ship at sea in the latter days of her use as an active warship.
The USS New Jersey’s Instagram account does not feature any historical photos. Most of the photos focus on promoting continuous existence as an event space, while others depict reenactments to show staged authenticity. This account features a wide variety of subjects because it shows a lot of events taking place. While no human subject is still the single category with the most pictures, overall most of the photos analyzed do have
human subjects. This account features photos of a wide variety of different events and really promotes itself as a destination for all ages of people to keep coming back to.
The USS North Carolina’s Instagram account pays a great deal of homage to those who served aboard her and offers a lot of insight into the daily lives of sailors. The main focus of this account is historical photos with people in them. It really brings the ship to life in a way that is different than many of the other Instagram accounts for battleships. Recently the account has shifted to show more modern day photos of continuous existence and staged authenticity. However, the focus is still clearly on the people that called this ship their home. The account is very much in line with the types of signage that is currently found aboard the ship herself, including lots of personal stories directly from her former crew about their lives aboard.
The USS Texas has a similar Instagram account to the North Carolina. The vast majority of the photos are historical. However, the Texas’s account features more continuous existence and staged authenticity photos than the North Carolina’s. While this Instagram account also features a lot of photos of historical people, a lot of the historical photos are general views of the ship at sea. This account provides a lot of information about the lives of the Texas sailors, as well as a brief overview of some important locations she has sailed to throughout her history.
The Instagram account for the USS Wisconsin is primarily focused on continuous existence. This account not only promotes the battleship, but it also heavily features promotional photos for the bigger museum it belongs to. Most of the photos do not have human subjects and there are a lot of advertisements for events going on aboard the ship and in the attached museum. This account is very different than others that are part of this
study because it focuses more on the museum as its own entity and presents the battleship as just one of the many exhibits visitors can see there.
Discussion
In this study I provide a basic understanding of the ways different battleship museum are promoted for tourism on Instagram. The categories that were developed for this study provide some insight into the differences in the ways each Instagram account is used. The categories do not overlap each other and they can be applied to any photograph that is posted by one of the battleship museums. These categories would also work for analyzing tourism on other types of museum ships. They are not limited to just battleships. The data generated allowed for comparisons to be made between each museum. This is helpful because it shows where some museums are strong and where they could use improvement in their online presence.
This study is not without its limitations, however. Each account had a different number of pictures. While the chosen number of pictures to analyze was 30 from each account, not every account had 30 pictures. The USS Massachusetts only had 23 pictures on the whole account, so in this case the methods of the study had to be modified and all of the pictures were analyzed. If it were more feasible, it would be beneficial to be able to
analyze every photo on all of the Instagram accounts. This alternative method would provide a much larger dataset, and a more complete picture of the ways each account is used. It would also be better if more people ran the same tests and then aggregated the results. This control measure would help greatly with the objectivity issues because it would ensure that the data is not just created based on one researcher’s opinion of what
they are seeing in each photo. It would also be beneficial to run a content analysis of other media outlets. This current study is limited just to Instagram. Some museum ships may have other promotional methods, such as other social media outlets, brochures, and other publications. In order to get a more complete picture of how each ship is promoted, alternative content sources would have to be considered.
Conclusion
These results have shown that there is not one way that every battleship museum uses to promote themselves for tourism on Instagram. There are definitely benefits of including photos from each of the three spatial categories in order to cater to the desires of a broad audience. The continuous existence approach is a good way to ensure the ship stays relevant in the modern era. This engages people in a way that keeps them wanting to come back. Staged authenticity is a good strategy to preserve the culture of the ship and help people feel like they are experiencing a part of what actually happened on the ship historically. Including historical photos is useful because they help tell the story of the sailors that served on the ship and the pictures show what was important to them. It is the combination of these three spatial categories that gives a complete picture of how
humans have interacted historically and continue to interact with the environment of the ship. All of this establishes a sense of place aboard these ships, which keep the ships very geographically relevant even as the world changes daily.
The curators of these Instagram accounts may wish to keep some of the resulting information from this current study in mind. By posting a wide variety of photos, they can stay relevant to a broad audience. Based on public responses to photos, in the form of comments or “likes”, it can better be determined what types of content elicit the most interest of viewers. This current study leaves the door open for many future studies. It would be very beneficial to conduct a similar study on other social media outlets, such as Facebook or Twitter, as well as conduct a study on the other types of advertising these museums engage in. It could also be beneficial to conduct a survey of people that actually visited these locations and find out how they discovered the location and what their preferences are. With all of this information, museum ships will be able to stay relevant
for generations to come.
Acknowledgments
There are a lot of people who deserve recognition for making this journey possible for me. I need to start by thanking my loving Mom and Dad for taking me to visit so many museum ships over the years while I was growing up. I know Mom may not have enjoyed spending entire days aboard battleships and aircraft carriers, but I had a ton of fun and am grateful for those experiences. I thank Dr. Ezra Zeitler and Dr. Garry Running for being my academic mentors and advisors throughout my time at UWEC. You have both been an incredible help to me and I know I will carry wisdom from you both for the rest of my life. I thank Martin Goettl for always being there when the technology goes awry. I don’t know how many classes I have taken where you have been the savior of all things technology related. I thank Yvonne Plomedahl for helping keep the Geography & Anthropology department so organized. You have helped me with scheduling issues over the years and I am very thankful for that. And last but not least, I thank all of my friends and family that have been so supportive of me along the way. I could not have done this without all of you.
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