Measuring social and reputational impact through Web and Social Media Analytics. The case of the festival Fotografia Europea

With this paper, we contribute to the understanding of how festivals can be investigated not only by traditional techniques such as surveys on customer satisfaction and impact assessment analyses, but also by information available on the web and social media. We test this approach on the case of a photography festival held in a medium-sized city in Northern Italy. Our contribution lies in shedding light on how WSMA (Web and Social Media Analytics) can better inform our understanding of a festival’s (or other events’) social, reputational and media impact and, more generally, on the benefits of employing a more varied toolkit useful not only for the justification of the arts’ investment, but also to improve festivals’ organization and community engagement.