EduComR: Instrument for the Analysis of Museum Educommunication on Social Media

Abstract

Cultural institutions must use social networks to promote the empowerment of audiences and democratize knowledge through communication by emphasizing participatory and high-quality heritage education. This study aimed to create an analysis instrument (EduComR) that allows to identify and examine the educational-communicative strategies carried out by heritage institutions on social networks. The research followed a mixed methodology, where the predominant approach was qualitative, involving a content analysis of the publications shared in social media. The pilot test sample consisted of studying n=364,448 tweets from 72 institutional accounts in both American and European contexts published in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Italian. The results yielded a validated by expert judgement instrument composed of five dimensions of analysis: 1) Hypertext elements used by cultural institutions to share content, 2) Functions of language, 3) Procedures of heritage education, 4) The participatory dimension through the R-relational factor and 5) Suggested learning. The EduComR instrument represents a relevant contribution to the evaluative research of educational- communicative actions in the field of heritage and allows cultural institutions to identify key media actions to improve their planning, encourage engagement and promote hyper-connected audiences