Recent decades have seen an impressive expansion of digital technologies. Digitalization has transformed cultural ecologies at national, regional and global levels, providing new means of cultural production, easing cultural dissemination and encouraging consumers’ own creativity. With this transformation, the existing boundary between local and global, between production and consumption, and between culture and the media is increasingly blurred, resulting in new forms of creativity and new ways of cultural interaction. Yet, the digital as technology is viewed as neutral: it potentially allows for the diversification of cultural expressions and the expansion of public access to them but these new opportunities have also brought about new challenges and concerns, such as the issue of digital divides and concentration of digital platforms.
As “the digital” has become a defining feature of contemporary cultural life, any discussion of cultural diversity should pay adequate attention to its impacts and implications, as noted by UNESCO’s Exchange Session on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in the Digital Age (June 2015). In particular, bringing the digital agenda to the understanding of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (hereafter the 2005 Convention) is important given the Convention’s focus on the cultural industries, which are heavily affected by the increasing use of digital technologies and online communications. The current text of the Convention refers to “information and communication technologies” and “new technologies” but how these technologies relate to the diversity of cultural expressions has yet to be explored. Similarly the Convention does not provide recommendations specific to the digitalization of culture. Digitalization does not simply mean the application of digital technologies to culture but also implies that global cultural dissemination taking place today might be better captured by the notion of “cultural flows” rather than “cultural trade”, the effects of which have been the Convention primary concern. Thus, it is timely, if not urgent, to explore the nature and impacts of digitalization with regards to the purpose, scope and implementation of the Convention.
