Museums + Instagram

  • Katerina Lazaridou
  • Vasiliki Vrana
  • Dimitrios Paschaloudis
Conference paper
First Online:
Part of the Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics book series (SPBE)

Abstract

Instagram, the social photo sharing service includes dedicated mobile applications that allow users to take and manipulate photographs and small videos and to share them online while other users can react through comments and ‘likes’. Since its’ launched, Instagram has seen enormous growth; and now Instagram community counts more than 400 million monthly active users. Museums and galleries have begun to exploit the opportunity to offer visitors quality pictures from the museum’s collection, short information along with small snapshots from the museum’s workaday life and to shape the museum’s image in the internet. Despite the fact that it is the most popular photo capturing and sharing application, up to date there have been very few published, academic studies about Instagram. The paper fills this gap and investigates use of Instagram by the most visited museums worldwide. It records museum performance characteristics like number of followers, following and number of posts. The paper concludes on how Instagram can be used by museums to their advantage, to boost their visibility on the internet, attract more attention and potential visitors.

Keywords

Instagram Photo sharing Museums Performance 

JEL Classification

O33 L11 
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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • Katerina Lazaridou
    • 1
  • Vasiliki Vrana
    • 1
  • Dimitrios Paschaloudis
    • 1
  1. 1.Technological Education Institute of Central MacedoniaSerresGreece

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