Participatory heritage: a multiple-case study of Lithuanian grassroots cultural heritage communities on Facebook

Abstract

The dissertation reveals the importance of grassroots participation in cultural heritage activities through social networking sites. It is the only study that provides a holistic approach to people participation based on a country-scale study, analyzing a wide range of cases and data collected from 266 „Facebook“ communities. The conceptualization of participatory heritage integrates an interdisciplinary research corpus, that combines the theory of participation, engagement, as well as a wide range of participatory cultural heritage and social media research. The aim of this study is to assess existing grassroots participatory activities in the field of digital cultural heritage that is enabled and promoted by social networking sites. Emphasizing the lack of research on this topic, the aim of this dissertation is to better understand the participatory heritage and to offer a more accurate interpretation of the concept based on the analysis of grassroots cultural heritage activities on Lithuanian „Facebook“ communities. This study analyses existing non-formal cultural heritage communities (pages and groups) created outside institutional boundaries and seeks to assess their role in shaping the participatory heritage paradigm. The study takes into account evidence-based data collected on the „Facebook“ platform and provides examples from multiple case studies