Heritage in a world of Big Data: Re-thinking collecting practices, heritage values and activism

This special issue examines the dynamic relationships between production, availability and uses of big data, contemporary collecting, heritage value-making and social activism. The shift from an informational to a more profoundly interconnected Web and the resulting emergence of an unprecedented deluge of often unstructured data are transforming how we create, interpret, value, manage, analyse and ‘put to work’ heritage resources. Contributions will discuss three core themes and their inter-relations. We ask: how is the data deluge re-shaping the ways in which memory institutions select the materials to collect, preserve and share in the public interest and what futures are crafted through these collecting practices? How is a world of big data affecting the processes through which we assign values to heritage and the methodologies we use to assess heritage values? And how can these new digital heritages and digital heritage research approaches facilitate different forms of social activism? In addressing these questions, the authors of both original research articles and commentaries contribute to the development of the field of digital heritage, while adding new dimensions to critical data studies by drawing on heritage conceptualisations, theory and practice.