Bridging the digital divide: Older adults’ engagement with online cinema heritage

Abstract

Is there a way to ensure older adults can bridge the digital divide and engage with online cultural heritage? How can cinema-going memories encourage cross-generational engagement? This article proposes to address these issues by using the Italian Cinema Audiences research project as a case study, and specifically cinema-going memories as intangible cultural heritage (Ercole et al., 2016, Cinema heritage in Europe: preserving and sharing culture by engaging with film exhibition and audiences. Editorial. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 11(Summer): 1–12. Web. ISSN: 2009-4078). It aims to tackle the difficulty of engaging the older generation with the digital world, by proposing and testing new ways to resolve it. Through a mixed-methods ethnographic approach, this article investigates different strategies: the use of social media platforms; a cross-generational activity involving Historypin, a digital, user-generated archive of crowdsourced historical material; an online dedicated archive built in collaboration with the older adults involved in the project. These different solutions aim not only at increasing digital engagement among older adults, but also at furthering younger generations’ involvement in shared cultural heritage in an online context. By focusing on the memories of cinema-going in 1950s Italy, the article explores the implications of the advantages and disadvantages of these different approaches. It also tests Anja K. Leist’s research findings (2013, Social media use of older adults: a mini-review. Gerontology, 59(4): 378–84) on the key role of moderators (the younger generation) to help novice users (the older generation) in the ‘continuous engagement’ in digital environments. We conclude that in order to bridge the digital divide two components are necessary simultaneously: the creation of digital platforms in which the older generations are both curators and users, and the support of and interaction with younger generations.

Bridging the Digital Divide for Rural Older Adults by Family Intergenerational Learning: A Classroom Case in a Rural Primary School in China

“…For instance, at a small town in the south of The Netherlands, university students educated senior citizens on how to use the Internet via social events and volunteering, which is critical for their social integration [ 55 ]. Additionally, in Italy, grandparents and grandchildren engaged in short-term digital contacts to promote cultural transmission [ 56 ]. However, older adults have a harder time achieving sustainable development because intergenerational learning is generally short-term and discontinuous.…”

Digital humanities: Mission accomplished? An analysis of scholarly literature

“…First of all, the mentioned predominance of textual analysis among the research subjects has now reduced. For example, audio and visual data, cinema, music, dance, the production and study of born-digital content and computer games, biometry, geography, cartography and geographic information systems have become part of DH (Zeng et al, 2022; Dibeltulo et al, 2020; Hong and Wu, 2022; Escobar Varela and Hernández-Barraza, 2020; Bailey-Ross et al, 2017; Salah et al, 2021; Wei et al, 2022). Even recently, however, some privilege is reserved for text: Frabetti (2012) notes that DH is generally considered to embrace all the activities that draw their methods from computer science, such as image processing, data visualization and network analysis, ‘to produce new ways of understanding and approaching humanities texts ’.…”

Design and realization of the digital protection platform of traditional intangible cultural heritage based on virtual reality technology

“…Plaster et al illustrate the risks associated with the public exhibition of cultural artifacts, which both jeopardize the holders and authors of the artifacts while potentially affecting the inheritance of cultural heritage for future generations [9]. Silvia, D. et al describe a senior citizen-driven online archival record of cultural heritage, which facilitates the integration of older adults into online socialization based on digital media technologies and also facilitates the dissemination and preservation of cultural heritage digitally [10]. Hannewijk, B. et al stood for the popular vision.…”