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spread of piracy easier and more threatening. This combines the roles of user and producer –
defined by the hybrid neologism prosumers – merging cultural goods and genres, bypassing the
apparent contradiction of cultural participation, being both active and passive, and attempting to
make some sense of it all. All these practices are increasing the volume and speed of exchange,
letting people interact with cultural expressions and products – texts, picture, video, music, etc. –
influencing value systems and having a deep cultural impact.
The speed with which these new phenomena – participation in social networks and exposure to
digital and cultural content – develop is swelling the ranks of a taxonomy which is very difficult to
classify, let alone measure, evaluate and compare. Under these conditions, we cannot rely on a
few indicators or on a limited set of data to build an ‘acceptable’ model of cultural behaviour and
participation. It is now necessary to investigate the use of information and communication
technologies (ICT), use of time, and exposure to cultural contents, using a wide variety of tools.
For example, while it is commonplace to suggest that English dominates the Internet, closer
network analysis of exchanges between individuals shows a large Portuguese community linking
Portuguese speakers in Europe, Africa and South America (Oustinoff, 2012).
We are currently observing big changes and the rise of new cultural paradigms and behaviour,
armed with a set of research tools elaborated in the last century and adapted to analyse social
life through a well-defined taxonomy that is every year less adequate for helping our
understanding.
Traditional tools, methods and cultural statistics are not obsolete. They still provide the
foundations of any research, but their effectiveness is redefined everyday, along with the
boundaries of the field within which they might be consistently adopted. New methodologies,
metrics and methods of analysis are very important in understanding specific facts and trends –
especially in the field of ICT (UNESCO, 2011). We do not have a coherent corpus of tools or any
unique approach to understand this complexity. Something of a sophisticated and cultivated
bricolage of new and old methods and tools is required for social researchers who have the task
not only of measuring cultural participation, but also offering a complex understanding of these
phenomena. Since datasets and measurements are always hard to compare in different
countries, an effective description of the situation, a clear understanding of what counts as
cultural participation for different social groups, the underlying hypotheses, constraints and limits
of every piece of research are the real richness that can be shared by the community of
researchers, government officials and policymakers.
1.3 A global handbook: Aims, goals and instructions for use
The handbook provides statisticians and cultural officials with a state-of-the-art reference guide
for the measurement of cultural participation, with particular attention to its feasibility in
developing countries. The handbook builds upon and integrates the concepts and definitions of
the 2009 FCS.
The overall purpose is to present current trends in the measurement of cultural participation.
Attention is paid to describing the limits of existing methods and tools, especially for crosscountry
comparison of datasets and indicators. The concept underlying the handbook is that
comparison should not generate a reductionist view of the phenomena but, on the contrary,
progress towards a deeper understanding of cultural participation. To this end, the handbook
recommends combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, bringing measurement and
understanding together.
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