Title: Social media use by museums - a qualitative and quantitative analysis of two Greek museums

Authors: Elias Gounopoulos; Dimitra Vassou

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, University of Western Macedonia, Grevena, Greece ' University of Western Macedonia, Grevena, Greece

Abstract: Social media (SM) can help museums promote their activities worldwide and extend the visitors' experience. In the past few years, the Greek museums have adopted SM to promote their presence and educate the public. However, they failed to use them as a key marketing tool since they face major problems, such as limited funding. We have selected as our case studies, two important Greek museums (The Museum of the Royal Tombs at Aigai and the archaeological museum of Thessaloniki). We conducted a quantitative, (i.e., metrics) and qualitative research, (i.e., interviews and frame analysis) to understand the actual role of SM and Facebook in their marketing activities. Although both museums try to use different SM to interact with the public, their presence in most SM is rather limited. Our research provides useful insights for the museums' managers and the national policymakers for a more effective use of SM.

Keywords: museums; social media marketing; Facebook; case study; Greece; mixed research; qualitative research; quantitative research; frame analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDCET.2022.120834

International Journal of Digital Culture and Electronic Tourism, 2022 Vol.4 No.1, pp.16 - 35

Received: 11 Nov 2020
Accepted: 08 Aug 2021
Published online: 11 Feb 2022 *

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