Europeana and the Curation of European Identity. Europeana's Curated Exhibitions and the Limits of Digital Heritage Inclusion

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines Europeana, the European Union's digital cultural heritage platform. The thesis evaluates whether and how Europeana's editorial choices produce particular constructions of European identity, and what patterns of inclusion and absence emerge from those findings. Through qualitative content analysis of a sample of ten exhibitions, the research maps the themes and framing strategies present in Europeana's editorial output, thus contributing to a growing body of critical scholarship on digital heritage governance in Europe. The analysis draws on Smith's (2006) account of authorized heritage discourse for a deeper understanding of how institutions naturalise particular social positions as universal ones, supplemented by Billig's (1995) concept of banal nationalism, Bourdieu's (1984) theory of cultural legitimacy, and Gillespie's (2014) work on platform politics. Together these frameworks structure the analysis of a purposive sample of ten exhibitions drawn from Europeana's Stories section, organised across five analytical dimensions. The universal European subject implied across multiple exhibitions reflects, on closer examination, the experience of those for whom European institutions have historically worked. The gap between Europeana's stated commitment to diversity and what its curated output actually does is not a matter of individual curatorial decisions. It reflects the institutional position from which European cultural heritage continues to be defined.