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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to highlight and reflect on the increased use of social media in the museums sector in the UK and beyond. It seeks to explore the challenges of utilising such media for institutions steeped in discourses of authority, authenticity and materiality.Design/methodology/approachArguments are illustrated using examples of practice and policy from across the museums sector, and are informed by critical theory. In particular, Erving Goffman's frame analysis is used as a means for understanding and articulating the current use of social media by museums.FindingsThere is currently a gulf between the possibilities presented by social media, and their use by many museums. This leads to forms of frame misalignment, which can be intensely problematic. It is crucial that museums increase their understanding of the frames within which such activity is being encouraged and experienced.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper does not offer a comprehensive mapping of social media use by museums at the current time. Rather, it uses notable examples to foreground a number of concerns for exploration through further research.Originality/valueThe paper calls into question the naturalised discourse surrounding social media use in the museums sector. It calls for a re‐appraisal and re‐framing of such activity so that it might more genuinely and satisfactorily match the claims that are being made for and about it.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Figures -- 1 Introduction: The Seductive Power of Immersion -- 2 Layers of Experience -- 3 Traces: A Case Study -- 4 Against Immersion? -- 5 Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Glossary of Examples -- Index

Abstract
Services offered by genealogy companies are increasingly underpinned by computational remediation and algorithmic power. Users are encouraged to employ a variety of mobile web and app plug-ins to create progressively more sophisticated forms of synthetic media featuring their (often deceased) ancestors. As the promotion of deepfake and voice-synthesizing technologies intensifies within genealogical contexts – aggrandised as mechanisms for 'bringing people back to life' – we argue it is crucial that we critically examine these processes and the socio-technical infrastructures that underpin them, as well as their mnemonic impacts. In this article, we present a study of two AI-enabled services released by the genealogy company MyHeritage: Deep Nostalgia (launched 2020), and DeepStory (2022). We carry out a close critical reading of these services and the outputs they produce which we understand as examples of 'remediated memory' (Kidd and Nieto McAvoy 2023) shaped by corporate interests. We examine the distribution of agency where the promotion by these platforms of unique and personalised experiences comes into tension with the propensity of algorithms to homogenise. The analysis intersects with nascent ethical debates about the exploitative and extractive qualities machine learning. Our research unpacks the social and (techno-)material implications of these technologies, demonstrating an enduring individual and collective need to connect with our past(s), and to test and extend our memories and recollections through increasingly intense and proximate new media formats.

This chapter contends that the awkward positions implicit in applied theatre research and practice provide useful perspectives from which to re-examine relationships between theory, practice and research that underpin wider knowledge-making practices in theatre and performance and the epistemological and ontological assumptions that underpin those practices. Applied theatre's responsiveness to invitations to practice and research in diverse contexts and its commitment to effecting social change complicates any easy categorisation of 'method' of practice and research. The chapter argues that different ways of thinking and doing implicit in applied theatre research and practice may be profoundly reflective of a contemporary moment. This moment is characterised by the contestation of overarching political and/or philosophical explanatory frameworks and evidence of global upheaval that has made the search for responsive, embedded and ethical knowledge practices a pressing imperative. The first part of the chapter provides a philosophical and theoretical positioning using a discussion of two prevalent 'modes' of research in applied theatre, namely broadly conventional social science research and reflective practitioner/action research modes. The second part of the chapter explores three case studies that exhibit distinct approaches to applied theatre research but that overlap in very instructive ways in the methodological and epistemological challenges and questions they generated