MED HISTORIEN I BYEN - KULTURARV SOM SMARTPHONE APPS

Resumé

EMBEDDED CITY HISTORIES: CULTURAL HERITAGE AS SMARTPHONE APPS | A number of city museums and cultural heritage institutions have during the recent years developed various combinations of internet sites and smartphone apps, through which the users are guided to places of cultural interest and offered information about them. The article presents four different Danish cultural heritage smartphone apps developed and launched during the recent years, and examine the stated intentions and motivations compared to the actual content of the digital sites. It is argued that priority is given rather to affective communication and the communication of ordinary people’s everyday stories than to factual knowledge, but also that the level of participation is low. Within a theoretical framework of experience economy, mobility and affect theory, I argue that the digital and mobile museum communication has a participatory and democratic potential but needs to balance this ambition in relation to the agendas of experience economy and commercial place branding.