‘Everything’ disappears … reflexive design and norm-critical intervention in the digitalization of cultural heritage

Abstract

According to narrative trends, digitalization has the potential to deconstruct both power structures and practices of exclusion in society. What we argue here is that this deconstruction is not the result of digitalization alone, it is dependent on how digitalization is done. On the contrary, digitalization has often resulted in reproduction instead of transformation and deconstruction, i.e. digitalization tend to uphold practices instead of challenging them. Being slightly more provocative, what becomes digitalized is often what we can easily capture and understand. Similarly, when we open up for an increased participation in the creation of digital artifacts (sometimes expressed as demand-driven, citizen-centered, or participatory development), those participating in digitalization are often already known; the use of already established contact channels making them easy to reach and connect with. Such logics raise questions about the intersections of norms and power and the potential transformative character of digitalization. The aim of this paper is to, through a theoretical framework combining critical information systems, policy enactment and norm critical design, introduce a reflexive design method to gently provoke norms. We analyze the need to intervene in the everyday practices of digitalization. This is done in an empirical case study of the making of a regional digital cultural heritage portal. The results indicate that digitalization needs norm critical interventions to change existing practices and prevent norm reproduction. Otherwise, as in this case of the digitalization of cultural heritage, digitalization runs the risk of strengthening existing power structures and excluding practices instead of challenging them.

Representational work and ‘reverse order’ essentialism: Digitisation of local information in Thailand and Bhabha’s Third Space

“…The empirical data further contains no indications that the inclusion or exclusion of LI holders constitute any sort of explicit concern to the LIWG. It is therefore likely that the digitisation here rather falls in the common category of projects that, as argued by Nyhlén and Gidlund (2019), tend to invite those that are known and easy to reach, and only after the agenda has been set. Such approaches restrict 'real' participatory opportunities for LI/ILK holders, including decisions on what gets included, who can have access, and how this will occur.…”

“…These restrictions concern how those who are included are constructed as comparatively passive contributors of LI resources (c.f. Benyei et al, 2020; Nyhlén and Gidlund, 2019), and as equally passive recipients of digitised representations of the same (c.f. Brown and Nicholas, 2012; Ridgeway and Guntarik, 2017).…”

“…Even the mere conceptions of participation vary considerably. In a direct critique of shallow and biased approaches to participation in cultural heritage preservation and digitisation projects, Nyhlén and Gidlund (2019) argue firstly that what becomes digitised is often what is most easily captured and understood, and secondly, that those invited to participate will likewise often be already known, easy to reach and invited too late in the process to be able to contribute or influence in meaningful ways. In this way, they argue, the effects of digitisation of cultural heritage rather reinforce existing power structures than mitigate or eradicate them.…”

Lost in Translation – How Policy EnactmentGet Stuck in the Digital Fix

“…The research project, as a whole, addresses issues of who contributes to what becomes representations of cultural heritage and what happens to these representations when they are transferred to a digital portal. In addition to the empirical material presented here, we also developed a method for reflexive design and normcritical interventions (Nyhlén and Gidlund L., 2018).…”