Engaging Digitally: Assessing Youth Digital Participation in Cultural Heritage Management

With the assistance of advanced digital technologies, new focuses have been places on the digitalization of cultural heritage and digitally mediated participation in heritage management. Youth, aged between 15-24, are regarded as ‘digital natives’, for their intensive exposure to the digital environment and their intrinsic creativity with digital technologies. Various digital tools have been adopted by practitioners to enhance youth participation experiences or generate innovative forms of youth digital participation (e.g., gamification, crowdsourcing platform, social media). However, it is noticed that youth have limited digital literacy and low self-protection, and the misuse or overuse of digital technologies among youth might lead to the unexpected digital divide or digital exclusion, which have negative impact for heritage values preservation and dissemination. Thus, we aim to construct an assessment framework with criteria and indicators to evaluate youth digital participation, then validate this framework with experts and practitioners. Firstly, a systematic literature review was performed, and the results led to the establishment of an assessment framework consisting of four criteria and 38 indicators, as well as a summary catalogue of digital tools for youth engagement. By conducting an online survey with heritage management practitioners, the usefulness and feasibilities of these indicators were tested. Through descriptive statistics analysis, it shows that all the assessed indicators are deemed useful, while the feasibilities of some indicators might vary due to the constraints of local context. This assessment framework can serve as the measurement of digital participation and be informative for future policymaking.