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Digital Culture: The Changing Dynamics
countries and Canada shows that the digitization of cultural heritage, museums,
archives and libraries is in the forefront, followed by the digitization of audiovisual
documents and photographic collections. The field of “e-art” (digital artistic
creativity) is rarely mentioned. According to the Compendium, only a few countries
have adopted a strategy which, in the context of new technologies, includes digital
cultural content (Finland, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway,
Poland, Portugal, Moldova, Slovakia), the most developed being those of Finland:
Digital Content Creation Strategy (2007) and Great Britain: White Paper on
Competitiveness (1998) and Culture Online (2002). Finland’s strategy defines digital
content creation as “production of cultural, documentary, educational, research,
entertainment and marketing content for the electronic media”. The key aim of the
British Culture Online is to mobilize the resources of the cultural sector to enrich
school education, particularly in subjects such as history, literature, music, art and
design, strengthening new links between digital technology and cultural resources. 2
The Canadian strategy – Digital Content Strategy – which is not mentioned in the
Compendium despite this country’s participation in the project, concerns cultural
heritage, but also underlines the power of the digital content industry. Canada has
also developed a Digital Culture Online Branch in the framework of the Department
of Canadian Heritage with the aim of promoting policies and programmes concerning
digital culture.
The analysis shows that, in the process of creation of a digital future, cultural
policies are focusing their attention more on the digitization of heritage than on the
emergence of a new culture where interactivity and convergence are becoming the
main aspects. Now that museums and libraries, the cinema, photography, music and
books have already become part of the digital revolution, it is high time to rethink the
role of cultural policies. In fact, it is necessary to start “a process of deconstruction
and refocusing of cultural policies” (Cowen, 2002). Aware of the importance of
digital culture in strategies and cultural policies, the Council of the European Union,
in November 2007, adopted a resolution on a European Agenda for Culture (Council
of the European Union, 2007), which put digitization among five specific priority
areas of action for the promotion of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue in the
2008-2010 period.
Interactive content: creators, users, consumers
The study of interactive content, undertaken by Screen Digest, CMS Hasche Sigle,
Goldmedia and Rightscom for the European Commission (European Commission,
2 In this respect, we can highlight the creation of the first national virtual museum in Britain
(the 24 Hour Museum) which is one of the five most visited cultural websites in the United
Kingdom, see pp. 154-161 in this book.
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