Bridging cultural heritage and communities through digital technologies: Understanding perspectives and challenges

We present and discuss the results of a qualitative study aimed at identifying what role interactive digital technologies could play in facilitating the participation of communities at risk of exclusion (particularly migrants and refugees) in cultural and heritage-related activities. Culture and heritage are known to be key factors in fostering social inclusion, and this has the potential for contributing to both the wellbeing of these communities and to cultural institutions themselves. Through surveys and interviews with two cohorts of participants (cultural heritage professionals and community facilitators), we gathered insights about their perspectives on how ICT tools could support their work with and for communities, as well as the challenges they face. This work sheds light on the opportunities and barriers surrounding the use of digital technologies for participation in the cultural heritage sector, which is timely due to the increasing focus on grassroots and community-led heritage initiatives and to the growing body of work on participatory ICT in disciplines such as human-computer interaction and community informatics

Journal of Education Innovation and Communication: Redefining Communication: Social Media and the Age of Innovation

The publications of the Communication Institute of Greece, such as the “Journal of Education, Innovation, and Communication (JEICOM)”, are open access without any costs for the authors or the readers. JEICOM is a Fully Peer-Reviewed, Open Access journal, publishing articles from all areas of education, innovation and communication, independent of the events organized by the Communication Institute of Greece. JEICOM’s scope is to provide a free and open platform to academics, researchers, professionals, and postgraduate students to communicate and share knowledge in the form of high quality empirical and theoretical research that is of high interest not only for academic readers but also for practitioners and professionals. JEICOM welcomes theoretical, conceptual and empirical original research papers, case studies, book reviews that demonstrate the innovative and dynamic spirit for the education and communication sciences, from researchers, scholars, educators, policy-makers, and practitioners in education, communication, and related fields. Articles that show scholarly depth, breadth or richness of different aspects of social pedagogy are particularly welcome. The numerous papers presented every year during the conferences organized by the Communication Institute of Greece, enables us to have access to a plethora of papers. Following a rigorous peer- review process, only a selection of these papers submitted is published biannually. In addition, to the papers presented in the Institute’s conference, we do encourage independent submissions of papers too. Nevertheless, before you submit, please make sure to respect the guidelines and templates provided. The current special issue of the “Journal of Education, Innovation, and Communication (JEICOM)”, is our First Special Issue (December 2019). We consider that education and fruitful exchange can improve our lives with the view to nurture intercultural communication. Academics can contribute significantly to the quality of the educational experience and help educate, communicate, exchange, meet new cultures, create and collaborate! We wish you an excellent reading and for the year to come soon, 2020, Health, Love, Knowledge, Education, Prosperity, Communication and Exchange

Participatory, Visible and Sustainable. Designing a Community Website for a Minority Group

This paper tackles three aspects of community-based technological initiatives aimed to support minority groups’ public expression and communication: participation, visibility and sustainability. Participation requires\ud the active involvement of the community members in various project phases (from design to evaluation), sharing decisional power with project leaders. Visibility\ud refers to the capacity of community messages to reach a relevant audience outside the boundaries of the community itself. Sustainability indicates the capacity of a project to continue, under the control and management of the local community, beyond its “supported” lifetime. The mutual influence of these three dimensions is examined in general and also in the light of a specific case study: an initiative involving a Romani community in rural Romania, having as main outcome the development of a community website (www.romanivoices.com/podoleni)

‘The Phenomenalisation of Heritage: Digital interactions through mobile devices with tangible and intangible heritage’

Within the ever developing field of digital heritage, mobile technology has enabled museums, and other cultural heritage institutions, to create platforms and activities that not only extend the reach and depth of their collections, but also their nature. Through the digital mapping of both tangible and intangible heritage, items become phenomena through a process of engagement and interpretation that not only re-models the role of the artefact in question, but also the perception of its meaning and the reframing of the contexts from which they, and we as users, come from. The result of this process is defined by this work as the phenomenalisation of heritage, and this thesis charts how this philosophical theory has emerged within the contemporary landscape of museology, as well as how it may be employed by heritage practitioners in creating a coherent structure for the development of mobile-driven activities that align with the participatory paradigm of museum practices. As a result, the chapters that follow here look at the evolution of the museum, the expansion of museum territory through the use of mobile technology, and the nature and impact of this process on users experiences, learning, and curation. Drawing from studies in museology, human computer interaction (HCI), and phenomenology, this thesis provides a philosophical analysis of the development and use of mobile technology in the wild outside of the traditional walls of the museum. Furthermore, through an empirical and embedded approach to research, the thesis also presents auto-ethnographic and ethnomethodological case studies in order to show evidence that this model of digital heritage produces both personal and shared interpretations of heritage phenomena through metaphorical excavation and co-curation

Arteria – A Regional Cultural Mapping Project in Portugal

This paper discusses the relation between cultural mapping and participatory community cultural mapping, proposing the integration of a mobile device application (app) in the cultural mapping process of the Arteria project. This application aims to expand the notion of cultural appropriation by exploring how citizens can make crucial contributions to the cultural mapping process. This technology will evolve from and improve Arteria’s digital platform/website by boosting the processes of collection and registration of tangible and intangible cultural assets and the dissemination of registered cultural assets. The app will also enhance the connection among socio-cultural actors and improve the quality of community involvement in the cultural, social, and political dynamics of this cultural mapping project. To justify the need for such a tool, an overview of the project’s intent, objectives, and activities is presented, as well as its philosophy of intervention in local communities.Cet article discute de l’introduction d’une application mobile dans le processus de cartographie culturelle du projet Arteria et met en évidence les liens entre planification culturelle et participation. L’application mobile vise à approfondir le sens de l’appropriation culturelle en explorant en quoi la participation citoyenne peut enrichir les processus de cartographie culturelle. La participation en ligne permettra d’enrichir les données et la plateforme d’Arteria en y ajoutant des références aux propriétés tangibles et intangibles de la culture urbaine. Cet article discute en quoi cette application mobile permettra d’enrichir les liens entre les acteurs socio-culturels et en quoi elle permettra également d’ajouter à la qualité de la participation et de l’implication citoyenne en tenant compte des dynamiques politiques de ces formes de planification

The social web and archaeology's restructuring: impact, exploitation, disciplinary change

From blogs to crowdfunding, YouTube to LinkedIn, online photo-sharing sites to open-source community-based software projects, the social web has been a meaningful player in the development of archaeological practice for two decades now. Yet despite its myriad applications, it is still often appreciated as little more than a tool for communication, rather than a paradigm-shifting system that also shapes the questions we ask in our research, the nature and spread of our data, and the state of skill and expertise in the profession. We see this failure to critically engage with its dimensions as one of the most profound challenges confronting archaeology today. The social web is bound up in relations of power, control, freedom, labour and exploitation, with consequences that portend real instability for the cultural sector and for social welfare overall. Only a handful of archaeologists, however, are seriously debating these matters, which suggests the discipline is setting itself up to be swept away by our unreflective investment in the cognitive capitalist enterprise that marks much current web-based work. Here we review the state of play of the archaeological social web, and reflect on various conscientious activities aimed both at challenging practitioners’ current online interactions, and at otherwise situating the discipline as a more informed innovator with the social web’s possibilities

Real and virtual convergences: the LOCUS Project: playful connected rural territories

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