Abstract
Morocco is endowed with an intangible cultural heritage of great interest at the global level, to which Moroccan craftsmanship, for which it is widely known internationally, makes a significant contribution. In today's, the notion of heritage is continuously expanding, experiencing an almost unlimited extension. The intangible heritage increasingly occupies a prominent place in the planning of several bodies, whose aim is to raise awareness among nations of the need to protect their cultural diversity and to help them to develop projects for the safeguarding and preservation of this category of heritage. The majority of marketing research has not addressed the issue of the relationship between social media communication and the promotion of intangible cultural heritage in the sense that there is an information deficit in addressing this issue. The concept of social media communication represents for professionals a lever of great importance since it has become indispensable to a good marketing strategy. It constitutes, in the context of research, a real tool for the promotion of intangible cultural heritage and the enhancement of territories. The main objective of this article is to explore the concept of intangible cultural heritage given the great importance it represents and its relationship with social media communication in the Moroccan context, especially in the promotion, transmission and even the safeguarding of this wealth. The study used a multidisciplinary exploratory in the fields of media communication and territorial marketing. Thus, the study focused on the two concepts: intangible cultural heritage and communication through social media, while analysing the nature of their interrelation in general and more specifically the relationship between communication through social media and the promotion of Marrakech handicrafts as part of Morocco's intangible cultural heritage. The results of this empirical study of an exploratory nature, conducted among 14 experts operating in the Moroccan handicrafts sector, demonstrated the existence of a strong relationship between the use of social media communication and the promotion of Moroccan intangible cultural heritage and more specifically the intangible cultural heritage of the city of Marrakech through the development and enhancement of its handicraft products. Keywords communication, intangible cultural heritage, Marrakech, Moroccan craftsmanship, social media.
Highlights
The proliferation of the use of new information technologies, including social media and the various innovative offerings, can offer their users a significant advantage when it comes to reducing or even eliminating the distance between culture and citizens
Along with the same lines of ideas, and in the same way of the structure of the interview guide, the discussions on communication via social media will be presented at first, the talks concerning the promotion of Marrakesh's handicrafts, and those concerning the relationship between social media communication and the development of intangible cultural heritage – the case of Moroccan craftsmanship
Regarding the first part of the research, the results of the exploratory study allowed to understand that communication by social media is of great importance, in the promotion of products and even territories
Summary
The proliferation of the use of new information technologies, including social media and the various innovative offerings, can offer their users a significant advantage when it comes to reducing or even eliminating the distance between culture and citizens. The preservation of the intangible cultural heritage has become a big challenge for any country in the world that has the will to safeguard this wealth and to win the battle of cultural safeguarding (Chan, 2012). Like other countries, shows a lot of interest in the preservation and promotion of the arts and crafts sector with strong cultural content, given its international renown in this sector, as well as the importance of the craftsmanship products for both Moroccan citizens and foreigners. The general idea of the paper is to understand the role of social media in the promotion of the intangible cultural heritage of Morocco, especially for handicrafts products from Marrakech. A literature review on the basic concepts of the problems will be presented, and the presentation of the main results of the exploratory study, conducted through semi-structured interviews with several officials in the field of Moroccan crafts, and finish with a discussion of the results obtained
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