Page - 247 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 3:2

247 | www.limina-graz.eu Chiara Zuanni | Heritage in a digital world sumed on Twitter and on online media webpages could be recalled: in the case of a viral museum video, most Twitter users shared articles by the BBC, the Independent, and CNN, with only 91 users tweeting the relevant article by the Daily Mail (which contained less correct information); conversely, though, the Daily Mail article proved to be the most commented on on the newspaper website, with 1280 comments (Zuanni 2017a). I argued there- fore for “the importance of including in the analysis data from different platforms, in order to gather perceptions and opinions on the event from a wider population” (Zuanni 2017a). Netnographic methods (Kozinets 2010) or digital ethnographies (Pink et al. 2016) have been proposed as a solution to gain a more in-depth qualitative understanding of online experiences and knowledge processes. On the other hand, the structure of the platforms also conditions the modes of communication, e. g. the 280-characters limit on Twitter, thus affecting the way information is circulated (through text, images, audio, or videos); aggregated (e. g. through hashtags or playlists); and consumed (how algo- rithms serve different content to different users). A famous example of how the platform algorithms shape the content we see and thus might influ- ence our reactions to specific issues is represented by Cambridge Analytica and successive analyses of the Brexit vote and the 2016 US elections. In this sense, the fact that these systems are often so-called “black-boxes” also challenges our possibility of fully understanding their functioning, and thus researching more precisely their impact on users’ knowledge. Finally, the rapid changes of the platforms in parallel with the need to bet- ter understand the ethics of collecting and preserving this material pose numerous challenges to both research and cultural institutions. On the one hand, there are social media APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), which in the last few years have notably restricted access for researchers (Bruns 2019); on the other hand, it is yet unclear how to best negotiate ac- cess to the data and manage it in relation to the platforms’ Terms and Con- ditions, personal data protection and copyright legislation, and heritage ethics. For example, in the case of Facebook, access to the APIs in order to search and collect posts has been restricted after the Cambridge Analytica scandal; at the same time, there is an ethical duty of care towards users who might have different levels of digital literacy, and consequently might not The structure of platforms also affects the way information is circulated, aggregated and consumed.