Abstract

Social networks have obtained a relevant presence in Communication programs and they are changing the way to disseminate information and engage in dialogue. They permit a more balanced and participatory model of communication between publics and organizations, based in dialogue and conversation, not persuasion. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate how museums are using Facebook to interact and engage in dialogue with their publics. This work asks if they are using this platform in order to be recognized as ‘museums 2.0’. Our results illustrate that the museums we studied (the 100 which are most important on the global level) have a very poor activity on Facebook, and they are not using all the opportunities that this social network offers as an interactive and dialogical means of communication.

Abstract

Ibex 35 and Fortune 500 companies are still not fully utilizing the dialogic potential of social media. The percentage of companies with a low level of dialogic communication exceeds the percentage of companies with a high level in both groups, according to this study which assesses the level of dialogic communication developed by firms with their external audiences on blogs, Facebook and Twitter in an integrated way. Based on Kent & Taylor’s (1998) framework, a dialogic conceptual tool has been created, refined and applied to all the sample. The tool analyzes 73 variables on three dimensions: Presence, Content and Interactivity. Inter-method triangulation has been applied to carry out the research: virtual ethnography, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and interviews with experts.