#LaCulturaNonsiFerma: Report on Use and Diffusion of #Hashtags from the Italian Cultural Institutions during the COVID-19 outbreak

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how Italian Cultural Heritage institutions used hashtags on social media during COVID-19 to promote engagement, showing proactive adaptation and positive user reactions that increased participation.

Contribution

It introduces an analysis of hashtag use by cultural institutions during COVID-19, highlighting their strategies and user engagement in a pandemic context.

Findings

Italian institutions actively adopted hashtags during COVID-19

Users responded positively, increasing participation

Hashtag activities helped create online communities

Abstract

This report presents an analysis of #hashtags used by Italian Cultural Heritage institutions to promote and communicate cultural content during the COVID-19 lock-down period in Italy. Several activities to support and engage users' have been proposed using social media. Most of these activities present one or more #hashtags which help to aggregate content and create a community on specific topics. Results show that on one side Italian institutions have been very proactive in adapting to the pandemic scenario and on the other side users' reacted very positively increasing their participation in the proposed activities.