Towards renewed cultural mediation for young people
Digital practices of youth: legitimate cultural expressions for rethinking mediation and building a renewed cultural democracy.
A necessary paradigm shift
The relationship between youth and digital technology constitutes a major challenge for cultural institutions today. Too often, the digital practices of young people are perceived with mistrust, even condescension, by the institutional cultural world. I propose a radical shift in perspective: rather than considering these practices as a threat or cultural degradation, we should recognize them as legitimate cultural expressions, protected by cultural rights, and carrying opportunities to rethink cultural mediation.
Cultural rights as the foundation of a new approach
The Fribourg Declaration (2007), integrated into French legislation since 2015-2016, establishes the framework for cultural rights. These rights aim to respect the dignity of people in their identity, community, and participatory dimensions. Currently being rewritten to integrate digital, ecological, and gender issues, this declaration establishes a fundamental distinction between cultural democratization and cultural democracy.
Cultural democratization proceeds from a top-down logic where “legitimate” culture is transmitted to audiences. Cultural democracy, conversely, recognizes culture in its anthropological sense: what constitutes us. This approach does not relativize the value of works, but postulates mutual enrichment between citizens and institutions, each occupying different but complementary roles.
Digital as a living environment
Digital is no longer a simple tool or a parallel universe: it has become a living environment, just like the air we breathe. Bernard Stiegler spoke of “equipped memory” to describe this anthropological transformation. It is not about replacing our cognitive capacities, but about the emergence of a new world where we develop different practices and skills.
This perspective is crucial for understanding contemporary cultural practices. The majority of people’s cultural practices now take place through digital means, making traditional museum practices marginal in quantitative terms. This reality does not invalidate the importance of museums, but questions their ability to create connections with audiences whose cultural references are profoundly transformed.
TikTok: a laboratory of cultural democracy
The example of TikTok perfectly illustrates this transformation. Far from being a simple platform for superficial entertainment, TikTok functions as a genuine tool for cultural creation and distribution. A simple button allows one to move from spectator to creator status, with editing and post-production tools accessible to all.
TikTok “trends” constitute creative palimpsests where thousands of people reinterpret, transform, and enrich initial content. This dynamic represents a more accomplished form of cultural democracy than many institutional mediation spaces. Each user can contribute, create, and draw inspiration from others in a logic of permanent mutual enrichment.
Digital heritage and respect for creations
The question of digital heritage raises fundamental ethical and practical issues. In many mediation projects, participants create content that then escapes them, remaining the property of the institution. This practice contravenes cultural rights that guarantee everyone’s access to their own cultural heritage.
The use of digital tools makes it possible to return ownership of their creations to participants. The example of young people from the Judicial Protection of Youth creating collages on secularism is telling: they left with their original works and have digital access to their creations. This approach respects their dignity and recognizes the value of their cultural production.
The long tail: rethinking cultural temporality
The concept of “long tail” theorized by Chris Anderson reveals a profound transformation of the cultural economy. While physical commerce concentrates 80% of its revenue on 20% of products (bestsellers), digital platforms see 50% of their activity generated by the immense diversity of niche content.
This logic invites us to rethink the temporality of cultural mediation. An Arte documentary on fasting, broadcast in 2011, experienced viral success eight years later, leading to the production of a sequel. Digital thus allows for a long life for cultural content, well beyond their initial moment of creation.
Implications for cultural institutions
Moving beyond generational logic:
Research shows that cultural tastes vary little between ages 15 and 65. The “youth” category therefore has no relevance in terms of cultural practices. The diversity of tastes cuts across all generations, questioning age-segmented approaches.
Rethinking institutional presence on networks:
Cultural institutions must question their presence on social networks. An institution has no clear identity on these platforms designed for specific projects and niches. Rather than seeking an awkward institutional presence, it might be more relevant to support audiences in their own content production.
Creating alternative conservation spaces:
Faced with dependence on GAFAM for the conservation of personal content, public institutions have a role to play in preserving citizens’ digital heritage. Internal sites, designed as common heritage crucibles rather than communication tools, can offer sustainable alternatives.
Towards renewed cultural mediation
This approach advocates neither cultural relativism nor the abandonment of traditional institutional missions. Rather, it invites mutual recognition: institutions bring their expertise, their heritage, and their specific skills; audiences bring their practices, their creativity, and their modes of cultural appropriation.
The challenge consists in creating authentic meeting spaces where each can enrich the other. This involves respecting cultural rights, recognizing digital as a living environment, and inventing new forms of mediation that take into account the long term and the diversity of cultural practices.
Art, as John Dewey reminded us, resides in lived experience, not in the object. Objects - whether physical or digital - serve as thirds, as mediators enabling multiple perspectives and individual appropriations. It is in this triangulation between institutions, audiences, and cultural objects that the future of truly democratic cultural mediation is at stake.
Cultural offerings are sometimes brutally questioned by the “young” audience. A challenge that manifests itself notably through indifference towards the prescriptions of cultural institutions, or even through disinterest in cultural venues. Over 15 years, digital technology has also revolutionized young people’s, and everyone’s, relationship to time and private space. The very definition of culture and its mode of access have been transformed.
To become capable of rethinking projects adapted to the real needs of contemporary youth, which falls under the mission of cultural policies, I believe we must first deconstruct our preconceived ideas, the judgments we may have without knowing. This involves taking the measure of new representations of the world and new cultural practices closely linked to digital technology.
How to do this? I believe that going through “doing,” precisely, is a very rich path for professionals. Experiencing through one’s own experience the stakes of cultural practices in the digital era, by participating in workshops with young people, by “playing” with digital technologies, by exploring new cooperation mechanisms, etc., with the aim of surpassing one’s usual criteria, in order to be enriched by youth’s ideas and uses. This is not about demagogy, but about weaving connections, which enables mutual transformation, creative hybridization.
Action-research on cultural policies for youth has always been one of the main areas of work for Benoît Labourdette, in cooperation with numerous actors from the cultural, educational and social fields. We propose here methods, accounts of actions and training, which we hope will be inspiring for actors from the cultural, social and educational fields at all levels. To offer an analysis of the stakes, as well as sociological, psychological, cultural foundations, to create solid supports in service of public service missions for youth.
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