Shaping cultural participation through social media

Abstract

The public sector has embraced a user-orientation paradigm, which has expanded through the open and democratic medium of social media. Although the potential of this digital technology and its visible outcomes have been analyzed in previous studies, there is virtually nothing on the complexity behind its implementation. This paper uses a case study involving three Italian museums to explore how social media strategy is shaped and enacted through their day-to-day business and activity. Museums are an ideal field for this kind of research because of the central role played by cultural participation and social media's critical function in pursuing new audiences. The study reveals a deep change to practice, touching praxes and practitioner skills, and modifying strategies planned around the user's approach, in the duality between authoritative and democratic voices. The findings disclose an emergent heterogeneity that is mapped along social media practices and the various associations linked to the praxes, opening the way for future studies concerned with the link between a user's (traditional) physical experience on social media and the level of democracy in user engagement.