Social networking sites and museums: analysis of the Twitter campaigns for International Museum Day and Night of Museums

Abstract

Social networks represent an opportunity for communication management in museums. This work analyses the joint initiative of five museums on Twitter during the most important milestone events of the year for the sector: The International Museum Day and the Night of Museums. The relevance of the study lies in the confluence of different disciplines and approaches: the humanities, corporate communication, digital communication and public relations. Moreover, these types of institutions are not a common object of study, despite their great relevance in the museum sector: The Lázaro Galdiano Museum; The Museum of Romanticism; The Cerralbo Museum; The National Museum of Decorative Arts; and The Sorolla Museum. Methods: The study is based on the content analysis of the Twitter accounts of the aforementioned museums as means to evaluate the campaign’s content management and generation of participation in the social network. Results and Conclusions: The results indicate these museums need to develop a more defined strategy that takes advantage of the potential of social networking sites, given that content is not used as a strategy and user participation is not as high as expected during these very relevant events.