CREATING A MUSEUM WITHOUT WALLS? THE ROLE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES IN AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
1. Introduction
This research project will aim to look at social networking sites and their role within audience development in the museum sector in the United Kingdom.
For the purposes of this research social networking sites are defined as online services / websites that enable the building and/or reflecting of social relations amongst people. Most commonly these sites enable the exchange of messages and the sharing of events, ideas and interests. Social networking sites include Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Whilst this study will look broadly at which social networking sites are being used by the museum sector, more detailed research will be undertaken in respect of one of the social networking platforms. The platform that has been selected is Twitter. The reasons for choosing Twitter include it’s ongoing and substantial growth over the past 12 months; it’s development as a real-time search tool following integration with Google; the arrival of promoted tweets enabling a new form of web-advertising and the reported transformation Twitter has had on the broadcast media. In addition it has already proved to be a popular social networking site with in the region of 650 museums worldwide registered on Twitter directory WeFollow.
The objectives of this research are as follows:
• To understand if and why museums are using social networking platforms;
• To understand if and how museums are using social networking platforms as part of their audience development strategy;
• As a case study to analyse the role of Twitter within audience development in the museum sector;
• To identify how Twitter can be used by museums as part of their audience development activities; and
• To apply the lessons learnt from the research back to the broader use of social networking platforms as a tool for audience development in the museum sector.
For further details about this research please contact B Hunter b.hunter@pgt.salford.ac.uk or for the latest updates visit http://socialbedia.wordpress.com
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