Digital cultural policies
Challenges and contexts
This chapter introduces the topic of the volume and gives the key theoretical framework upon which the book is based. After outlining the changing nature of the key concepts of digital and cultural policy, it further provides argumentation for the nascent field of digital cultural policy research. Special attention is paid to the contextualization of digital cultural policy in the European context where different relations towards the division between cultural, media, and communication policy are present. The chapter shows how the impact of online platforms and the so-called platformization processes bring about the necessity of policy research at the transnational and supranational levels, while also taking into account the pitfalls of epochalism and techno-determinism. It also shows that we can talk about hyperconvergence as a central feature of the digital cultural policy. The authors show how digital cultural policy is both a cultural policy that explicitly relates to digital production, distribution, or consumption of cultural expressions, as well as the parts of other policy areas that affect it. This represents a challenge that cultural policy research must respond to through a greater degree of interdisciplinarity and empirical openness.
Book: Digital Transformation and Cultural Policies in Europe