Visitors engagement and social media in museums: evidence from Italy

Museums are increasingly using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the other social media to communicate their activities and exhibitions, organise projects and debates, build and sustain communities of visitors. Moreover, one of the increasing use of social media is the engagement of actual and potential visitors. However, considering the novelty of the theme, the literature seems to be scarce and this finding suggests the necessity to study more-in-depth the use of social media in museums. Hence, the research aim is to study the use of social media for visitor engagement considering the case of Italian museums. The results show that, despite the increasing use and popularity in social media, the level of engagement in Italian museums is quite absent. Consequently, while Italian museums are very popular and well-known on social media, they are not able to use them for visitor engagement.