Sustainable Biocultural Heritage Management and Communication: The Case of Digital Narrative for UNESCO Marine World Heritage of Outstanding Universal Value

Abstract

The paper addresses sustainability, heritage, management, and communication from UNESCO’s Marine World Heritage (MWH) perspective, analyzing its digital narrative footprint through social media. It aims to understand how MWH is conceptualized, managed, and communicated and whether it is framed with sustainability and biocultural values facilitating interactivity, engagement, and multimodal knowledge. Hence, a content analysis of the Instagram accounts of the MWH of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) sites and protected areas has been conducted. The study included evidence from their Instagram profile, posts, features, and reactions. The findings indicated the dearth of a management and communication strategy being shared among and across UNESCO’s MWH of OUV sites and protected areas, capturing the “lifeworld” and the “voice” of the marine heritage as unified. They also revealed that nature and human, and biological and socio-ecological ecosystems of MWH of OUV sites and protected areas are not interlinked in marine heritage management and communication featuring the whole and the entirety of the marine heritage site ecosystem. The lack of this expansion of meaning and engagement does not facilitate the shift of the route in the marine-scape, from discovery and being listed as World Heritage to human-nature interaction, diversity, dynamicity, and ocean literacy. The study contributes to setting the ground rules for strengthening marine heritage management and communication in light of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Ocean Literacy Decade (2021–2030).

Twitter as a Tool for Citizen Education and Sustainable Cities after COVID-19

“…The data offered in each search are provided by Twitter's API (Application Programming Interface) and are subject to its limits [64]. Analyzing the general policies and guidelines directly on the Twitter website, the social network explains that its APIs provide companies, developers, and users with programmatic access to their data, with the exception of non-public information or direct messages [65], which implies necessary compliance with the required ethical standards [66][67][68] and proposes a radical rereading of traditional journalism as a primary source of information [69][70][71][72].…”

The Principle of Sustainable Development as the Basis for Weighing the Public Interest and Individual Interest in the Scope of the Cultural Heritage Protection Law in the European Union

“…The dynamics of changes and also a definite process of changes is also entered into the concept of sustainable development, and implementation of the principle of sustainable development allows for flexible adjustment to dynamically changing conditions of the social, economic and environmental milieu, respectively. It is also worth noting that contemporary literature is concerned with the issue of sustainability in various contexts related to cultural heritage [59][60][61]. Connection of a principle of sustainable development with the protection of cultural heritage also allows for a multi-aspect approach to the issue of protection of cultural heritage, which should also contribute to the increasing the effectiveness of cultural heritage management, especially that in contemporary times the heritage must be appropriately managed [62,63].…”

Aesthetic value protection and tourism development of the world natural heritage sites: a literature review and implications for the world heritage karst sites

“…World Natural Heritage sites (WNHSs) are natural areas of outstanding scientific and aesthetic value that developed during the evolution of the Earth [ 1 ], and they are characterized by having outstanding universal value (OUV). World Natural Heritage sites (WNHS) conservation has become a global undertaking, and OUV is an important aspect of heritage conservation [ 2 , 3 ]. At the same time, WNHSs preserve the most complete and original appearance of nature's charm and craftsmanship; they are intuitive, vivid and comprehensive natural knowledge textbooks for a country or region, and heritage site tourism provides tourists with a full range of contact with and appreciation for the beauty of nature's stunning landscapes.…”