Van sociale mediagebruiker naar fanatieke museumbezoeker?

The use of social media is broadly accepted, by cultural organizations, as a marketing tool to expand their audience reach. Theorized by Bourdieu, economic and cultural capital are seen to be the characteristics of the visitors who visit museums the most frequently. Bourdieu states within his reproduction these, that cultural participation, as in visiting a museum, is socially constructed, which means that the cultural participation of an individual is determined by income, level of education and their previous cultural participation pattern. Nevertheless, cultural organisations are convinced that social media usage is less socially constructed. But little is known about the construction of social media usage among museum visitors and therefore the efficiency of social media as a marketing tool for cultural organizations to renew and expand their audience. The aim of this research was to fill this research gap by testing if the economic and cultural capital influences the social media usage of the visitors. Based on the reproductionthese of Bourdieu, cultural participation, income and level of education were presumed to be determinants of the way visitors use social media. In total, 264 visitors of Museum Rotterdam (N = 264) participated in a survey, identifying their social demographic, social economic values and social media usage. Using logistic regressions and multinomial regression, results showed that the age of the visitors predicts the social media usage. However, age, level of education and income predict the frequency of the social media usage among the visitors in a limited extend. The specific media usage among visitors, remarkably showed no relation with social demographic and social economic characteristics of the visitors. The results from the three regression models were implemented as acceptance of the assumption, that social media usage among visitors is not that socially constructed as their cultural participation is. And therefore, could be an efficient tool for cultural organisations to expand their audience. Moreover, the conclusion showed that the reproductionthese of Bourdieu is not applicable on the social media usage. On the contrary, the individualisation theory of Ulrich Beck could provide a possible explanation why social media usage among museum visitors is not fully determined by their income and level of education, and therefore is differently structured than cultural participation. The results of this research contribute to a better understanding of the way social media usage is structured by the visitors and supports the vision of cultural organizations on social media. Further research should be focused on the way cultural participation is linked to social media.