A diachronic cluster analysis of Danish museum websites

Earlier studies describing and categorizing the development of museum websites either build on theoretical knowledge or the analysis of a qualitative sample of relatively few, but prominent museum websites. The present study takes a broader approach and aims to characterise the development across Danish museum websites through the years 2005-2020. The methodological approach is a diachronic (temporal) analysis of Danish museum websites using data extracted from the Danish Web archive including 94 and 81 state funded museums in 2005 and 2020 respectively. A cluster analysis was used to identify similarities between museum websites. The cluster analysis shows that the museum website representations possess distinct attributes pivotal to their degree of resemblance with others, such as collection type, geographical location, organizational structure and whether the communication and dissemination strategy focus on disseminating collection content or extends to a broader communication scope. However, the quantitative text analysis approach to studying archived museum websites did not identified a new typology. Instead, the study suggests how a cluster analysis of the Danish museum web sphere can constitute an initial step in comprehending domain development, and ultimately discerning the attributes that characterize the different museum website clusters.