Shoe Exhibit at the Holocaust Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, unlike many other museums, contains a moral message within its walls. The museum serves the purpose of a memorial to the victims killed during the Holocaust as well as an educational exhibition for its visitors. However, its most important purpose is for visitors to leave the walls with a new understanding of respect for humanity. The Holocaust Museum focuses on a younger audience because they are the generation that will soon lead our country. The museum aims to inform this audience about the Holocaust in general as well as any misinformation about the historical event that tends to be quite prevalent on the Internet. In What You Do Matters, a video posted on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website, the Director of the Museum, Sara Bloomfield asks viewers to image the Nazi’s with the Internet and to imagine the power the Nazis’ could have gained with this technology. The power of the Internet paired with young adults can also be very powerful. The Internet is a dangerous atmosphere when it comes to the presence of hate and negativity. There is much room for hate to grow on the Internet, and the Holocaust Museum focuses on getting rid of this potential hate as if it were the hate that accumulated almost a century ago among the Nazis.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has engulfed themselves into the world of social media. They understand that it is important for their content to be found on the Internet and they use certain outlets to make sure of it. On the Youtube video, Social Media Important Tool for Holocaust Museum, Larry Swaider the Chief Information Officer at the Holocaust Museum explains why it is important for the Museum to use social media in order to be found on the internet, as well as how they use social media as a compliment to one-on-one personal communication.
I think that the Holocaust Museum is doing a great job at using social media to their advantage. Not only are they getting their information out to the public more than they would have before, they are also demonstrating a great way to use social media to other museums and businesses. The Holocaust Museum is also doing a good job at pleasing their stakeholders. If they have a good presence online, then it will be easier for customers to go online and get information about the Holocaust or even about the museum itself.
I feel that this museum has an important message to relay to our youth. Social media could be a very effective method for reaching this audience. The online presence that the museum could achieve by making information on the Holocaust and the museum readily available on its websites would be a definite positive.
I have visited the Holocaust museum and I felt it had a profound effect on me. I think it is important to use youtube as a way to communicate with younger generations outside of the museum. The director is focusing on how hatred now could do a lot more harm with the use of the internet. I also think it the museum sees the potential as well in social media and is taking the route of using youtube to explain why they find it important and how it will inform the younger generations of our history.
The idea of Nazi’s using social media for power is unbelievably scary. Had they had access to it in their time period, the results of the Holocaust may have been even worse, especially since today everybody we know uses it. I have also been to this museum a few times and every visit I am more moved. It is doing a great job using social media to spread the word about the museum while at the same time getting rid of the hate. They make it more personal by using videos to talk about the museum and how it benefits from using social media.