The Facebook strategy as an interactive communication tool in the RITMARE Flagship Project.

The Italian Flagship Project RITMARE (http://www.ritmare.it), funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, is the leading Italian marine research project for the period 2012-2016. One of its aims is promoting the establishment of a permanent forum between researchers, decision makers and stakeholders, so to foster the integration and transfer of research results to a large public. Social media and particularly Facebook (FB) can significantly contribute to such objective. Since its activation (December 2012) the RITMARE FB page (https://www.facebook.com/ProgettoRitmare) is allowing to communicate with large groups of people very quickly and efficiently. Until today almost 1,000 people visited the RITMARE FB page, with a viral maximum capacity, i.e. the number of individual users who have viewed a new item on the published page from a friend (not directly from our page), of 3,166 people and an average weekly number of 676 visitors. Demographic analysis indicated that 55% of users are women whereas adults aged between 25 and 44 years make up 63% of users. People from Italy, France, United Kingdom, Spain and Germany are visiting the website, mainly through the Google engine.