Challenging Populist Truth-Making in Europe: The Role of Museums in a Digital ‘Post-Truth’ European Society (CHAPTER) is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (2020-2026). Through ethnographic research and digital innovation, it develops approaches and best practice examples to support museums in challenging the growing influence of populist truth-making in Europe. The project is based at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Ludwig Uhland Institute for Historical and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tübingen, the Jagiellonian University (JU) in Krakow and University College London (UCL). It cooperates with museums and board members from different European countries, as well as with software developer Fluxguide in Vienna. A key goal of the project is to work with young visitors from the UK, Poland and Germany to co-design a museum app that inspires critical reflection on the power of populist truth-making. The project brings together a broad range of anthropological fields, including digital anthropology, museum anthropology, political anthropology and the anthropology of emotions/affects to develop a European perspective on how museums can challenge the power of populist truth-making in contemporary digital societies.
You can watch our video about the CHAPTER App and the process of its production here.
One of the biggest challenges to democratic public discourse in contemporary European societies is the rise of so-called “post-truths”, particularly on the Internet, which challenge established norms of fact-based belief systems. Museums are increasingly confronted with strong claims about culture, history, society, politics or environmental developments that are considered to be true because they feel true. Drawing from anthropological perspectives on emotions and affect, CHAPTER highlights the role of emotions in populist truth-making, exploring how they work to foster particular opinions about society, politics and culture. Such practices of emotional populist truth-making pose a dilemma for museums: How can they counter populist truth-making without explicitly or implicitly reproducing populist practices? Is it possible to question emotional truth-making without reinforcing a simplifying dichotomy between “rational truth” and “emotional post-truth”? What can museums do to bring the complexity of questions of truth-making to the fore without feeding into populist assumptions and accusations? In short: How can museums meaningfully and effectively respond to, reflect upon and critically encounter populist claims? CHAPTER takes these questions as its key challenge. To meet this challenge, the project deploys an innovative multi-layered research design, combining ethnographic research on populist truth-making, visitor experiences and digital innovation in museums with an applied co-design of a digital museum app. The app will be developed in cooperation with three partner museums and the software company Fluxguide. It aims to challenge young visitors to critically engage with practices of populist truth-making. Our goal is not only to co-design this app together with young visitors, but to accompany, analyse and evaluate its use in order to gain critical knowledge about the role of populist truth-making in the everyday life of young Europeans and potential of digital media in museum contexts on a much broader level. We will produce a best practice portfolio that offers practical and interdisciplinary solutions to allow museums and cultural institutions to build upon CHAPTER and develop individual strategies for challenging the growing influence of populist truth-making in Europe. CHAPTER takes these questions as its key challenge. To meet this challenge, the project deploys an innovative multi-layered research design, combining ethnographic research on populist truth-making, visitor experiences and digital innovation in museums with an applied co-design of a digital museum app. The app will be developed in cooperation with three partner museums and the software company Fluxguide. It aims to challenge young visitors to critically engage with practices of populist truth-making. Our goal is not only to co-design this app together with young visitors, but to accompany, analyse and evaluate its use in order to gain critical knowledge about the potential of digital media in museum contexts on a much broader level. We will produce a best practice portfolio that offers practical and interdisciplinary solutions to allow museums and cultural institutions to build upon CHAPTER and develop individual strategies for challenging the growing influence of populist truth-making in Europe.
You can use the CHAPTER app in the BERLIN GLOBAL exhibition at the Humboldt Forum Berlin, in the museum of the Oskar Schindler Enamel Factory in Krakow, in your classroom or seminar room, or simply at home to learn more about populism. The app is anything but a boring museum guide: with interactive, digital tasks that function like a mixture of computer games and social media, the app takes you to different objects in the museum in different chapters. The chapters deal with a range of different topics, such as sport, posters, music or the Berlin currywurst - and, of course, what these topics have to do with populism. The more of the chapters you play through, the better you will understand how populism works and how it fuels conflicts in our society. This will help you to recognise and question populist strategies in your own everyday life. You can use the app directly on site in the BERLIN GLOBAL exhibition at the Berlin City Museum in the Humboldt Forum in Berlin and the Oskar Schindler Enamel Factory museum in Krakow. You can also use the version for the Museum of London without being on site. Use is free of charge and the three versions are available in the respective national language and in English. The CHAPTER app was developed by the academic research project ‘Challenging Populist Truth-Making in Europe’ (CHAPTER for short) at the University of Tübingen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, University College London and Jagellonian University (Krakow) in collaboration with the development company Fluxguide in Vienna. A special feature of the CHAPTER app is that the content was created together with young pupils and students. The project was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. You can download the app here.
This work area aims to understand the impact of populist truth-making on European museums, providing a rich ethnographic comparison on a European scale. An empirical explorative interview study, coordinated by postdoc researcher Julia Leser and conducted together with the PhD researchers Alice Millar, Marlena Nikody and Pia Schramm, will capture the experiences of museum stakeholders in Germany, Poland and the UK. It addresses the following questions: What is the impact of populist truth-making on European museums? What strategies have museums developed so far in order to challenge post-truth practices through their curatorial and educational work as well as public engagements? What strategies and politics do populist political actors support and/or enforce in museums? How are questions of museums’ own truth-making presented? Given the particular relevance of digital media for “post-truth” societies (e.g. online platforms functioning as spaces for the proliferation of “fake news” and other “alternative facts”), the team will also conduct an Internet ethnography on these questions.
Our second work area pays tribute to the fact that museums are not only spaces in which ‘rational’ knowledge is exchanged, but are also spaces in which ‘truths’ are emotionally transmitted and the feelings of others encountered. Adapting James Clifford’s concept of the contact zone allows us to capture how museums constitute what we call “affective contact zones” and to understand their dynamics with particular regard to young adult visitors. The PhD researchers will collaborate with partner museums (the exhibition Berlin Global of the City Museum of Berlin located at the Humboldt-Forum in Germany, the Museum of London in the UK, and Schindler's Enamel Factory in Poland) and schools/universities/colleges in Berlin, London and Krakow to conduct ethnographic fieldwork on how young visitors relate to the affective contact zones of museums. The key research questions are: How do young visitors experience and engage in emotional truth-making in museums? How do museums function as affective contact zones in relation to particular truths? What can we learn from this study to better situate and understand the influence of populist truth-making on museums?
The purpose of work area 3 is to evaluate the affordances of digital media in fostering critical engagement with populist truth-making among a young audience: What role do digital media play in truth-making processes? How can digital tools, such as museum apps, inspire young museum visitors to critically engage in post-truth practices and questions of emotional truth-making during their visit? In what ways can social media be used to share reflections beyond the museum space? To answer these questions, we will ethnographically study both the affordances and practical uses of existing museum apps, digital devices and platforms to explore how they shape truth-making practices among young adults in the context of museums. Together with work area 1 and 2, this work area will help to develop ideas for the co-design of the CHAPTER museum app.
In this work area, we will merge our ethnographic findings from previous work areas to develop a museum app in cooperation with our project partner Fluxguide. The purpose of the app is to foster critical citizenship skills in regard to populist truth-making by enhancing the affective contact zones of our partner museums through a digital, playful and critically reflexive medium. The app will have a shared design but the contents will be tailored to each partner museum. The app will be available for free download from the App Stores for iOS and Android devices. After its release, we will study and critically reflect on the process of developing and implementing the app, using ethnographic techniques to better understand the use of the app by young visitors. Through a mobile content management system provided by Fluxguide, app users will be able to collaborate with our researchers, provide feedback and adjust the contents and tasks provided by the app according to their individual ideas. By reflecting this collaborative process through an ethnographic lens, the research team will gain crucial insights into the relationship between emotional truth-making, digital media and museum spaces that will lead to the creation of a best practice portfolio for challenging populist truth-making through digital innovation in museums.