The Politics of Mass Digitization

Abstract

A new examination of mass digitization as an emerging sociopolitical and sociotechnical phenomenon that alters the politics of cultural memory. Today, all of us with internet connections can access millions of digitized cultural artifacts from the comfort of our desks. Institutions and individuals add thousands of new cultural works to the digital sphere every day, creating new central nexuses of knowledge. How does this affect us politically and culturally? In this book, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup approaches mass digitization as an emerging sociopolitical and sociotechnical phenomenon, offering a new understanding of a defining concept of our time. Arguing that digitization has become a global cultural political project, Thylstrup draws on case studies of different forms of mass digitization—including Google Books, Europeana, and the shadow libraries Monoskop, lib.ru, and Ubuweb—to suggest a different approach to the study of digital cultural memory archives. She constructs a new theoretical framework for understanding mass digitization that focuses on notions of assemblage, infrastructure, and infrapolitics. Mass digitization does not consist merely of neutral technical processes, Thylstrup argues, but of distinct subpolitical processes that give rise to new kinds of archives and new ways of interacting with the artifacts they contain. With this book, she offers important and timely guidance on how mass digitization alters the politics of cultural memory to impact our relationship with the past and with one another.

The Mystification of Digital Technology in Norwegian Policies on Archives, Libraries and Museums: Digitalization as Policy Imperative

“…& Karapapa 2013, Thylstrup 2019).1 While clearly related, our use of the concept "policy imperative" differs from these studies in that it not merely affirms the priority placed on digitalization within cultural policy discourses and point to the arguments on which this is founded. Rather, the concept is intended as a tool for furthering theoretical understanding of how concerns, values or principles are elevated into obligatory and unquestionable reference points in cultural policy discourse, as well as in other domains of policy.…”

“…In recent years, a growing body of studies that deal with digitalization and cultural heritage have emerged, particularly within the disciplines of information science, law, and computer science. As noted by Thylstrup (2019), these studies have been geared towards technology or information policy issues rather than the exploration of theory, and they have tended to problematize the "hows" rather than the "whys" of processes associated with digitalization. In this article, we have sought to contribute to fill this knowledge gap in studies of digitalization of cultural heritage, through the application of classical social theories on cultural processes.…”

“…In tandem with the evolution of the Internet and information technology, a complex assemblage of projects and programs of digitalization (or "mass digitization") of cultural heritage has emerged over the past decades (Thylstrup 2019). This comprises global initiatives, modelled on the idea of a universal library containing all the world's knowledge.…”

Parsing Pegasus: An Infrastructural Approach to the Relationship between Technology and Swiss Security Politics

“…It is politics of hidden dissent or resistance (Scott 2005). It is also a creative politics “premised on the infra, that is the underlying rules of the world, organized around glocal infrastructures” (Thylstrup 2019: 25). The last point I will make is that infrastructural approaches depend on an academic infrapolitics of sorts to be feasible that defies the policing of disciplinary boundaries and make space for work across them.…”

Book Review: The Politics of Mass Digitization

“…Processes of creating and curating extensive digital repositories of physical works are often viewed as dreary and technical, both qualities Nanna Bonde Thylstrup challenges in The Politics of Mass Digitization (2019). Thylstrup, Associate Professor of Communication and Digital Media at Copenhagen Business School, explores the complex politics of projects aimed at digitizing print material at scale, which involve generating and maintaining – or transgressing – rules for cultural creation, curation, resistance, and conformity online.…”