International Museum Day: museums are becoming more and more social

Once again, this year, the International Museum Day celebrated the importance of museums in society

Cultural promotion, especially when it comes to museums, has become an increasingly important issue in the latest years: this has been proved by this year’s International Museum Day (IMD), celebrated from May 18^th to May 22^nd, which saw a great participation of institutions from all over the world. Many museums have pitched in and organized activities, shows, free entries to celebrate the IMD and raise public awareness about museums and their social and cultural importance. This has been the main aim of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the institution which has arranged the IMD for the last 39 years. For The interactive map in the IMD website showed the 2k activities offered all around the globe, allowing the viewers to visualize and choose which one to attend: from America to Oceania, to Europe, Asia and Africa, 111 countries participated to the initiative.

This year’s theme, “The museum and the cultural landscapes”, tried to highlight the responsibilities that museums share in protecting the cultural inheritance inside and outside their walls. This topic will be also discussed in this year’s ICOM General Conference, that will take place in Milan from July 3^rd July 9^th, where this subject will be used to develop new ideas and stimulate the positive cooperation between countries and people of different origins and culture.

SocialMeter Analysis monitored Twitter conversations on the IMD between May 5^th May 27^th, through the hashtags #museumday and #museumday2016, and it has collected over 14k tweets and 9202 users actively involved, most of whom from US, Italy, Spain and France. The tweet peak was registered on May 18^th, particularly among 12PM and 13PM. The most active users, in addition to the ICOM’s official account @icomofficiel, were the ICOM’s Mexico’s profile @icommx, the blogger @jennifuchs, the Twitter account of a blog dedicated to the sharing of culture and tradition, @heritage_ppl and the ICOM’s Italia’s profile, @icom_italia. The most mentioned users were @unesco, @xhnews (a Chinese press agency) and @mibact, the account of the Italian Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo (Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism).