doxa.comunicación | 30, pp. 309-330 | 311

January-june of 2020

Emelina Galarza Fernández, Eduardo Villena Alarcón and Aimiris Sosa Valcarcel

ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978

This research aims to find out the benefits of the communication management of Malaga’s cultural heritage and museu-ms on social networks, analysing the communication management of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), the Picasso Museum and the Casa Natal (Birthplace Museum), the Pompidou Centre and The Carmen Thyssen Museum. The objec-tive is to describe how the communication departments, where these museums’ corporate social networks are managed, are structured. It also aims to identify the social networks where they are present, and determine the impact of the mu-seums’ communicative management of the institution’s profiles on social networks. Finally, assessing whether this impact results in specific benefits for these organizations.

Multiple investigations have focused on the museum sector to study institutions’ online and offline corporate communi-cation (Viñarás, Cabezuelo & Herranz 2011; Jiménez, 2016; Cordón & González, 2016), its communication departments, job profiles and functions (Viñarás, 2009; 2011); to know how they manage their audiences and visitors’ motivations and opinions (Oliveira & Capriotti, 2013; Becerra & Domínguez, 2014; Parguiña, 2015; Panozzo, 2018), the efficiency of the communication campaigns they launch (Santos, 2012), the resources available to them (Viñarás, 2005; Soler, 2017), or the communication strategy that they carry out (Martínez, 2012; Lazzeretti, Sartori & Innocenti, 2015; Caerols, Viñarás, & Gonzálvez, 2017; Chic, 2018). However, the novelty of this study is that it aims to demonstrate how effective communica-tion management of local museums’ corporate social networks can contribute to an increase in tourism to their heritage “without attacking either its nature or character” (Velasco, 2009: 238).

2. Tourism, culture, and communication on social networks

The boom in the cultural sector is closely related to the development of the tourism industry worldwide. According to data from the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Tourism (2019: 3), Spain leads this sector, which “constitutes one of the main pillars of our economy, a source of income (contributing to 11.7% of the GDP), and employment (employing 12.2%) of the total number of the workforce in Spain”.

From the range of tourist services on offer annually in the country, “the most relevant product has been Spanish art and culture, 21% of the total” (Spanish Tourism Institute, 2018: 7). This figure is backed by the volume of leisure, recreation or holiday travel in 2018 by national and foreign tourists to any destination in the country, of which 14.5% (travel by natio-nals) and 17.5% (travel by foreigners) was initiated for cultural reasons (Ministry of Culture and Sports, 2019).

This is based on the fact that “Spain is the world’s nation with the second most designated historical, cultural heritage sites protected by UNESCO (World Heritage site)” (Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Tourism, 2019:7). One of the principles stated in the General Guidelines of Spain’s Sustainable Tourism Strategy 2030 is the “preservation of natural and cultural values, based on the fact that the conservation of our extensive cultural and natural heritage is a priority objective” (Mi-nistry of Industry, Trade, and Tourism, 2019: 10).

According to Viñarás, Cabezuelo, and Herranz (2011), one of the most significant cultural attractions tourist destinations can offer are museums, since they preserve part of a nation’s artistic wealth, shown to the public either temporarily or permanently. Despite a slight decline in the number of museums in Spain until 2018, the Yearbook of Cultural Statistics