Impact of new media technologies on museum awareness: COVID-19 virtual museums in Turkey pandemic process

In the most general definition, museums have been places where valuables and collections are preserved and displayed at the same time. The development of new media technologies affects museums as well as in every field. Thanks to the change and development of technology, the boundaries of time and space are disappearing in museums, and exhibitions can be visited in a digital environment through virtual museums from all over the world. The global epidemic in the world in 2000 changed the lives of people, and many institutions and organizations experienced a temporary closure period. Museums were also affected by this process. In this context, new ones have added to the existing virtual museums every day and the effects of virtual museums on us compared to real museums, how we evaluate virtual museums, and how they contribute to our contemporary critical methods are investigated. This study is important in terms of transforming museums in Turkey, which are closed to visitors due to the pandemic, into virtual museums by keeping up with technological developments, and investigating whether they contribute to the social, cultural, artistic, aesthetic, historical, and scientific development of people by increasing their accessibility. The main purpose of this research is to examine in-depth the effect of new media technologies on museum awareness during the pandemic period. It is to reveal how the exhibitions in museums are affected by the development of technology and the pandemic and how they are transformed. It is assumed that the findings reached in the direction of the sources within the scope of the research reflect the truth. This research is limited to virtual museums affiliated with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Turkey. The thesis consists of four parts. In the first part, after explaining the concepts related to the museum, the historical development process of the museums was examined. The functions, types, understanding of exhibitions, and types of exhibitions of museums are discussed. In the second part, modern museums in Turkey and the world are emphasized. Museums affiliated with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Turkey are presented with sub-titles. In the third chapter, new media technologies and the effect of the pandemic on museums are discussed. In the fourth chapter, a qualitative research analysis of the effect of new media technologies on museum awareness was made. In this study, the criterion sampling method, one of the purposeful sampling methods, was used. To collect the research data, individual interviews were conducted over Google Meet with 15 people who had visited the virtual museum at least once, and an audio or video recording method was used to collect complete and in-depth information during the interviews. To obtain in-depth information during the interviews, 6 main and 30 sub-questions were asked to the participants. The answers given by the participants to the questions were grouped and evaluated separately. The answers obtained were analyzed by the content analysis method. The purpose of the research, the scope, and limitation of the research, the type of the research, the problem/hypothesis of the research, the data collection method in the research, the universe and the sample of the research, the research data, and findings and the conclusion part are also discussed in the fourth section.