Over several decades, digital cultural heritage has been increasingly reused across research, education, creative practice and through public community engagement. However, these activities remain undescribed or inconsistently documented and difficult to compare. Organisations typically rely on 'proxy metrics' such as downloads, page views or reverse searches to assess use/reuse. However, these metrics reveal little about how materials were transformed, interpreted, or how they generated value and impact. GLAMs often rely on unstructured anecdotes to capture/trace reuse, as it is difficult to retrospectively document reuse when GLAMs publish cultural heritage data openly without the expectation of users to tell the organisation what they did with the digital cultural heritage they accessed and used. Documenting reuse approaches often focuses on single dimensions or factors such as sector, content type, audience or impact. This has resulted in fragmented knowledge about digital cultural heritage reuse, which has created limitations in carrying out evaluations across examples, learning from good practice and planning digital cultural heritage initiatives. This article introduces and empirically grounds a flexible, multi-dimensional schema for documenting and planning digital cultural heritage reuse. Using an abductive methodology that combines literature analysis and synthesis, practitioner interviews, user-journey examinations and iterative prototyping, we developed a six-category framework capturing (1) organisation and context, (2) heritage assets and technologies, (3) purpose and process, (4) users and engagement modes, (5) nature of use and availability, and (6) impact and sustainability. Applied across real-world examples, this framework can reveal forms of value, dependency and risk, often absent from conventional reporting in the reuse of digital cultural heritage. We argue that reuse documentation functions as a form of socio-technical infrastructure, enabling a shared vocabulary and understanding for cross-case comparison, cumulative learning and strategic design of digital heritage initiatives. By shifting categorisation from retrospective description to include prospective planning, the framework supports a more meaningful impact assessment and sustainable reuse of digital cultural heritage as a societal resource.

Purpose:

Democracy is often invoked as a core value of public libraries, archives and museums (LAMs) in Western countries. This article starts from the proposition that democratic work in LAMs is more than a mission statement, an abstract ideal, or a rhetorical label. Therefore, it presents the Flower Monster workshop, a creative visual workshop tool designed to help LAM professionals critically examine and reflect on their role in supporting democracy in day-to-day work.

Design/methodology/approach:

The theory-based workshop was developed through iterative collaboration between researchers, an artist and LAM practitioners. It evolved from traditional process diagrams into a complex, tentacled visual representation accompanied by figures of democracy. The tool employs speculative, non-deterministic and playful imagery to facilitate open-ended discussions rather than prescriptive solutions. Workshops with practitioners and researchers tested and refined the model.

Findings:

The Flower Monster and the accompanying figures of democracy serve both as a heuristic device and a provocation for institutional discussions on democracy. By avoiding deterministic frameworks, the visual tool engages LAM professionals in meaningful dialogue about democratic values, institutional practices and societal challenges without imposing predetermined answers.

Practical implications:

The workshop provides LAM professionals with a practical workshop tool for addressing urgent questions about their own and their institutions' democracy work. Its non-prescriptive nature enables culturally sensitive, context-specific discussions about democracy support while respecting institutional diversity and professional autonomy.

Originality/value:

This work introduces an innovative, arts-based approach to addressing democracy work in cultural heritage institutions. The speculative and playful visual methodology represents an innovative departure from conventional strategic planning tools, offering LAMs a creative framework for navigating politically complex terrain.

This research explores how platformization has transformed the presentation of climate change news by two leading English-language Pakistani newspapers - ’Dawn’ and ’The News’. With digitalization, news organizations adapt to the growing need for online presence in the competitive digital environment. Platformization here refers to the rise of social media companies and their integration into news organizations to disseminate news and enhance readership. This research is not about any discourse analysis of climate change news content. Rather, the main purpose is to understand how climate change news is being transformed on various platforms of ’Dawn’ and ’The News’. A detailed content analysis was done for 707 climate change-related news stories collected over four months from digital platforms including websites, E-papers, and official Facebook, Instagram, and X accounts. The study looks into how content transforms in terms of length, font, and visuals when shifting from websites and E-papers to social media platforms. Both organizations exhibit distinct patterns in digital adaptation. Findings show ’Dawn’ is more aware of platform affordances, while ’The News’ lags behind. Using the theory of affordances, this research explains how platforms influence news presentation. Social media platforms are not substitutes for websites and E-papers; they act more as attention-catchers. Climate change news on social media is shorter and often compromised. While platformization is useful for audience gain and retention, it is not helpful for informing audiences deeply about climate change. News on social media provides bits and pieces, and readers relying only on apps are receiving partial information. The real challenge lies in the fact that newspapers are business entities, and profit often comes before public interest. Future studies should explore journalists’ and organizations’ stances on this digital shift and how platformization affects genres like climate change journalism in the long run.

Ongoing societal datafication and, most recently, the widely noticed launch of ChatGPT, continue to raise the “user question”: what role(s) does the user play in datafied, artificial, and automated environments? Recent technological advancements have begun to challenge fundamental assumptions in media and communication theory and, thus, urge scholars to (re-)visit and (re-)examine the interrelations, dynamics, and entanglements of (human) users with datafied environments. Two rapidly expanding but still largely distinct bodies of research are addressing these topics: critical data and platform studies, primarily focusing on structural approaches, and user-centered perspectives anchored in the tradition of audience research. Situated at the intersection of studying platform power and user agency, the aim of this special issue is to connect structural approaches with studies of lived user experiences through the lenses of reflectivity and reflexivity. We believe that linking platform and data perspectives dealing with questions of power, accountability, and governance on a societal level to users’ engagement with digital technologies and automated systems in an everyday context is a fruitful path when aiming for a comprehensive understanding of the societal implications of the widespread adoption and integration of digital platforms and intelligent technologies. The concepts of reflectivity and reflexivity provide a valuable conceptual starting point for a more integrated and holistic discussion of the complex user-data relations emerging in and from datafied environments. While the individual contributions in this special issue present their own take on the proposed concepts, the purpose of this introduction is to establish a broader theoretical foundation by outlining some overarching considerations on how these concepts can be understood and integrated.

Website analytics from Google and other platforms has become the key performance indicators for communication practitioners. The omnipresence of different metrics, mediated through data dashboards, has an important impact on the world of communication. However, little is known of the imaginaries inscribed in these platforms, yet these imaginaries also govern the understanding of digital communication as a professional activity. We work with the theoretical idea of sociotechnical imaginaries, that is, a set of visions sustained by infrastructures, practices, and more or less shared meanings of social life (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015). Similarly, the technical imaginaire (Flichy, 2007), algorithmic imaginaries (Bucher, 2017), and data imaginaries (Tupasela et al., 2020) are emerging as collectively held understandings of what technology, data and algorithms do.

In our paper, we discuss Google’s switch from the analytics platform Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). We conduct a semiotic analysis of the analytics dashboards and map the related environment of instructional pages, videos and tutorials to uncover the imaginaries. While the surface-level argument claims GA4 to be better, the discontinuation of third-party cookies and change of user-tracking possibilities means that Google will often have to operate with much less data about the audiences than in Universal Analytics. The related environment of instructional pages, videos and tutorials demonstrates a diverse ecosystem of actors who are seeking to capitalise on Google's data collection interest and support the imaginary with their promotional materials directed towards communication practitioners.

The data dashboard is imagined as the one-stop site for an overview of the audiences, their interest and engagement; data is supposed to be precise, immediate, and actionable. However, there is also a clear link to imagining the work of the communication – success or failure in digital communication and reaching the audiences is imagined through the data on the dashboard. The role of AI and algorithms as supporting imaginaries related to audiences confirms the expectation of unlimited digital surveillance but also indicates the limitations of the data collection of the GA4. Communication practitioners in different fields rely on the data from Google and other platform players to help them understand the reach of their messages. But we find that in the ecology of complex relationships, messy data and diversity of actors looking to capitalise on the data provisions, the idea of the audiences is diluted and abstract. The research fills the gap in audience studies, demonstrating that despite the promises and fears Google Analytics is still supporting desperately seeking audiences (Ang, 1991).

Public libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) have historically played a pivotal role in the establishment and support of European liberal democracies (Rasmussen, Rydbeck, and Larsen 2023). Ideally, they serve as promoters of democracy, offering reliable information accessible to all, regardless of factors like gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, age, disabilities, political beliefs, or faith. In an ideal scenario, LAMs encourage engaged, well-informed citizens, contributing to a vibrant civil society. However, contemporary Europe faces significant challenges to the underpinnings of deliberative democracy. The region witnesses the growth of anti-globalist movements, widening divides between urban and rural populations, regional conflicts, and nationalism, often driven by populist ideologies disregarding fundamental democratic norms. These factors result in new social and cultural divisions, complicating values of openness, pluralism, tolerance, and non-discrimination. Currently, the existing conceptual tools are insufficient to comprehensively grasp LAMs’ role in these developments.

The panel consists of members from the core group of a recently formed network Libraries, archives, and museums as key pillars of modern European democratic societies. A key ambition of this network is to develop a conceptual model for discussing local LAMs’ role in democracy. The local perspective is critical because previous research on LAMs’ political or social roles typically focuses on large national and pan-national LAM initiatives. The model focuses on democracy as an area of problematization for local LAMs and describes the entanglements and assemblages of resources, processes, and activities as they produce democratic legitimization. We rely on theories of democracy, cultural policy, and legitimacy in the cultural sphere, (e.g. Mouffe 2000; Boltanski and Chiapello 2005; Larsen 2016), and build the model on an agency-oriented approach.

The panel introduces the first iteration of the model based on our research in Sweden and Denmark. We invite our audience to an interactive session in critiquing and refining the conceptual model that addresses the issue of how local LAMs contribute to democracy. We take an iterative and abductive approach, moving between theory and empirical evidence. The model is a work in progress and is part of a creative and experimental method where we invite the audience to think about democracy and LAMs with us. We invite the audience to contribute with global perspectives on the issue.

By developing the model, we aim to get a richer understanding of the expectations and responsibilities that are ascribed to libraries, archives, and museums in relation to political transformation, and the roles they themselves take on. We will also provide knowledge on processes of legitimization and responsibilization in cultural policies in Sweden and Denmark.

While a substantial body of research has explored the intricate relationship between journalists and metrics, there remains a notable gap in systematically understanding how evolving metrics over time influence journalists’ use of data as feedback. This study addresses this gap by investigating how alterations in the most valued metrics influence the utilisation of audience data for reflection and feedback in national and local newsrooms. The study spans multiple waves from 2012 to 2023 and comprises 72 interviews with Estonian journalists. It employs the Data Loop framework to analyse the circulation of audience data among media institutions, audiences, newsrooms, and individual journalists’ reflexive actions. Examining data reflexivity within newsrooms involves considering the interplay between newsroom culture, metrics-gathering technology, external pressures from changing business models, and journalistic agency. Over time, the metrics valued by newsroom managers have shifted – from prioritising clicks as a measure of audience interest to rewarding journalists based on minutes spent on stories or the acquisition of subscriptions. In this article, we argue that instead of considering the audiences behind the data, journalists and editors mostly use the data offered by metrics to reflect on their work. Noteworthy trends include journalists conforming to data dominance and shaping their work to align with prevailing metrics, particularly in the context of paywalls where individual article readership can be linked with direct income through subscriptions. Contextualising newsroom data within the Data Loop, this study illustrates how data serves as a source for reflections at both the individual and newsroom culture levels. Despite assertions of an audience turn, our findings indicate that a focus on metrics does not necessarily signify a focus on the audience but rather an unwavering interest in journalistic production.

This study scrutinises web analytics, specifically Google Analytics, in its capacity to support content creators in understanding user behaviour and improving digital communication. Google, with its different versions of web analytics software, is dominating the market in collecting and analysing web traffic statistics, and has thus become a central part of how digital environments can know their users. We use the concepts of transcoding culture and social imaginaries to show the importance of scrutinising the value propositions ingrained within the web analytics dashboard. Despite the excitement and fear related to Google knowing too much about the people behind the screens, the analysis shows that Google Analytics 4 strug­gles to provide a comprehensive understanding of audi­ences. Focusing on the four value propositions – overview, immediacy, control, and knowing the audience – we argue that Google Analytics overstates its understanding of audiences. It is in the interest of Google to hyperbolise knowledge about the audience, even with potential privacy concerns, as it supports the social imaginary of an all-knowing digital platform. Thus, a critical and nuanced approach to web analytics, considering their impact on society and privacy concerns, is needed to balance the discussions.

This article explores the intricate dance between desire and distance in ethnographic research and creativepractice, advocating for the inclusion of love letters as a methodological tool for critically articulatingindividual and collective desires. Grounded in the authors’ experiences at a workshop held during the 2023PARSE conference, the text delves into the genealogy of desire in research, situating love letters within aframework of intimacy and vulnerability. Drawing on diverse academic backgrounds, the authors reflect onthe intersections of personal and professional realms, emphasizing the ethical imperative of acknowledgingresearchers’ subjective experiences. Through a deep dive into the workshop’s planning process and itsenactment, the article elucidates the transformative potential of love letters as a means of fosteringconnection and understanding within academic and creative communities. This article invites readers toreconsider traditional research methodologies and embrace the tender work of love letter writing in theirown practice.