The Analysis of the Content Provided on the Instagram Pages of Iran’s Public Libraries and Their Users’ Engagement

This study aims to investigate the relationship between the content provided on the Instagram pages of Iran’s public libraries and their users' engagement.

The present research is of applied type and has been done by content analysis method. The present research population included 10,132 posts from 110 Instagram pages of the public libraries of Iran. Also, in order to analyze the content of the research population, a checklist created by the researcher has been used and after categorizing their types of content, the level of participation of their users has been calculated with the formula of user participation rate of Instagram pages.

The research findings showed that the posts published on Iran’s public libraries' Instagram pages could be categorized into ten groups: Announcement of Upcoming Events, Completed Events, General Announcements about the Library, Local and General News, Technology, Emotionally Inspiring Messages, Announcement of Library Resources, Celebrational Posts, Backstage and others. Most of the content in the posts on the public libraries’ Instagram pages belonged to the categories of the Completed Events, Announcement of Library Resources, and Announcement of Upcoming Events. In addition, the greatest amount of user engagement belonged to the categories of Completed Events, Announcement of Library Resources, and Announcement of Upcoming Events, respectively. In terms of user engagement, among the formats used, photo and text formats, photo and video and text formats respectively received the most engagement.

Proper use of hashtags, engaging content formats such as photos and videos, and user-friendly content such as events, informing upcoming events, introducing library resources, and emotional and inspiring messages will increase user engagement.