The role of social media engagement in the case of exhibitions around the world

Abstract

Digital media has had a notable influence on museum practices. Museums can strengthen their online presence through social media platforms. Regarding the concept of social media engagement in museums, the study examines how museums and their visitors interact on social media platforms, more specifically on Facebook, seeking to answer the question of whether greater engagement with social media posts about exhibitions can influence exhibition attendance. The empirical research was based on the analysis of a sample of 70 exhibitions and to test our hypotheses, simple and multivariate linear regression models were applied. The engagement-related variables were the daily number of likes, comments, shares, and posts. Contrary to the mainstream approach, the results showed that higher engagement on social media in the museum sector does not in itself lead to higher visitor numbers to a certain exhibition. Our results rather show that a higher number of visitors to an exhibition results in a higher engagement indicator on Facebook.