Embracing Digital Trends & Participatory Culture

The power of cultural participation in cultural production models 3.0 in the digital sphere: what are the impact areas of interest to CHIs, from which they can benefit and that can convince them to approach these models?

In the landmark publication “From Culture 1.0 to Culture 3.0: Three Socio-Technical Regimes of Social and Economic Value Creation through Culture, and Their Impact on European Cohesion Policies” eight impact areas are identified for which research activity, policy planning and practice (or at least conceptual development) are significant for assessing the potential of social and economic impacts of cultural participation. They are part of a vision, explained in the same article, that sees “Culture 3.0” as a successor to previous socio-technical regimes of cultural production, the traditional “patronage” and the era of cultural industrialisation. Both this vision as well as the eight areas were a source of inspiration used throughout these guidelines. 

INNOVATION: innovation has mainly to do with the growth of effective social transmission, translation and implementation of new ideas in business practices through the cooperation and direct involvement in the rules of creative content production that people can experience actively via digital platforms. They allow people to learn how to develop innovative meanings and practices (and, at the same time, how to challenge previous prejudices: the more digital cultural participation is socially pervasive, the more the socio-cognitive effects of cultural participation on attitudes towards innovation and change become relevant and visible). Massive bottom-up capacity building, such as the digital practices that occur in the digital platforms that characterise the web 2.0, is a promising path to create an innovation-driven economy and society. Active digital cultural participation could determine indirect macroeconomic impacts and become an engine of endogenous economic growth in ways that are complementary to those traditionally understood and identified.

WELFARE, CULTURAL WELLBEING: a significant amount of evidence in the literature shows that cultural participation can have significant effects on life expectancy. When it comes to the digital sphere, it can significantly impact isolation and sense of belonging. In general, cultural participation was the second predictor of psychological well-being after presence / absence of major diseases. In this sense, its impact is comparable to that of income, and significantly stronger than that of other variables. In many studies, the effect is particularly notable for the ill and the elderly, where the gaps in psychological well-being between subjects with high cultural access compared to low ones are enormous. Furthermore, the effect of social relations on the consequences of the well-being from cultural participation is significant: a given level of cultural participation has a greater impact on individual well-being in social contexts with high collective levels of cultural participation than in those with low participation. For what concerns the digital sphere, literature shows that social media can support young generations through their capacity to create connections with peers, and provide access to positive, inspirational content. Social media supports students’ mental health and if they did not feel that digital experience was positively serving their mental health, they took measures to not interact digitally.

SUSTAINABILITY: there is a new area of ​​cultural policy action with potentially significant macroeconomic effects and which, moreover, can reveal new types of careers and opportunities for culture professionals: sustainability. The growing emphasis on the social dimensions of sustainability has sparked a reflection on the question of whether socially transmitted behaviours, habits and customs can influence the effectiveness of energy resource saving programs. Once again, cultural participation can have an important indirect role in fostering social mobilisation and awareness of the social consequences of individual behaviours linked to environmentally critical resources. Furthermore, the social dynamics of recycling behaviour appear to be sensitive to proximity effects, so that there may be potential for the combined action of cultural policies that enhance cultural participation and socio-spatial transmission of pro-social behaviour (in particular, feeling responsible to commit to environmental enhancement goals). 

SOCIAL COHESION: a significant effect of active cultural participation in the digital sphere has to do with social cohesion, following the example of the digital communities and their important internal relations, which is of special relevance in terms of human development. This can happen when digital participation works as an ally of physical experience and interaction in community empowerment, as an antidote to social isolation and helplessness. In different forms of online social networks, such as digital communities, several members feel that they belong to a group of people with similar interests and characteristics. Indeed, literature shows that positive social media-based relationships can lead to positive as well as meaningful connections with other users. These positive relationships are built on a foundation of content that makes the audience feel like they are heard and understood. 

INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE is an issue that in the current European socio-political context is gaining unprecedented traction. In this regard, the indirect effect of cultural participation through the main digital platforms to international communities is creating the basic trust conditions for dialogue through the appreciation of cultural diversity and the overcoming of negative social stereotypes, often linked to ethnicity factors. The indirect effects of cultural participation on social cohesion stem from the fact that increased participation provides individuals and groups with new skills to conceptualize and understand diversity and to reprogram their behaviour from defensive hostility to open-minded curiosity, while discovering new possibilities for personal development. Considering the costs of interethnic and intercultural social conflict in Europe, this area qualifies as one of the most promising and urgent in terms of reformulating the cultural policy agenda and corresponding macro-impact.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND KNOWLEDGE: The cultural and creative field can be a powerful incubator for new forms of entrepreneurship, and the rapid growth of online content industries is paving the way to a new entrepreneurial culture, with strong generational identification. Moreover, these new forms of entrepreneurship could significantly improve the employability of humanities graduates, whose appeal to employers in the more traditional spheres of innovative entrepreneurship is generally considered weaker than that of technology majors. Finally, innovative forms of culture-related entrepreneurship could be important in addressing the new societal challenges of employability and shorter working hours in the context of the fourth industrial revolution and the unprecedented new problems of designing social environments characterized by pervasive human-computer interaction. 

LEARNING SOCIETY: The connection between lifelong learning effectiveness and intelligence, understood as the development of capacities that allow for successful adaptation, selection, and modelling of the contextual environment has been well established; again, there is a clear relationship between the evolution of this form of intelligence and the cultural capital acquired, an effect that can be seen as a consequence of strong evolutionary selective pressures. The association between active cultural participation and lifelong learning is therefore physiological and, indeed, one might even think of active cultural participation as a specific form of lifelong learning itself. However, it remains open to question whether, and to what extent, there is a strong, stable association between the breadth and effectiveness of lifelong learning programs and (active) cultural access. Research on this topic would be of great interest, not to mention its implications in terms of synergies between educational and cultural policies and the corresponding endogenous emergence of new hybrid models and approaches. 

COLLECTIVE IDENTITY: A final connection can be traced to collective identity. In recent times, considerable emphasis has been placed on the role of new and spectacular cultural facilities in affirming the identity and global visibility of specific urban or regional environments, and more generally on the role of culture in redefining social and symbolic foundations. This is probably one of the best understood indirect effects of digital production and participation, but it is worth noting that this impact has often been misinterpreted as the latest version of a commodified mass entertainment economy. On the contrary, the potential for the development of a collective identity re-constructed through the digital lies in its ability to stimulate new inclusive dynamics of content production and new modes of cultural access by the local community, as a consequence of the new opportunities created by the attraction of external resources. The crucial evolutionary impact of culture on collective identity is to enable the community to reconstruct a long-term vision of its own development, build transformational visions and take action accordingly.