Digital Culture and Digital Media as Heritage: Innovative Approaches in Interaction with Information and Scientific Communication in the Era of Massive Data and Immersive Interactive Technologies. New Contexts in International Relationships

Abstract

Digital technologies have, in recent years, changed the relationship between users, content, and information. These changes have been more noteworthy and tangible, particularly in the 2010s, accelerating in the year 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This context places societies in new scenarios where interactions change dramatically, and where digital technologies and scientific culture developed in recent decades have a relevant role. In this work, we analyse the technological context, focusing on media technologies and data production and dissemination, and their potential to advance and implement new relationships between stakeholders, users, organisations, research groups, and with data, information, and knowledge. Technologies such as extended reality, motion graphics, immersive journalism, massive and open data, data visualisation, open science, etc. create an ensemble of potential scenarios where the access to information and knowledge will present us with many innovative approaches. When digital technologies have changed our lives and our way of interacting with our peers and information, the new context has enhanced these changes, due to the emergence of new necessities: firstly, the necessity of scientific research; and secondly, the necessity of designing and considering new interactions and ways of establishing relationships. In both cases, digital media technologies are performing a relevant role which may even further accelerate changes in the new context and scenarios emerging, changing relationships and ways of interacting at all levels, from individuals to international relationships, and, of course, between individuals and information. This context places a new scenario before us, where digital media and scientific research and production are a relevant part of human heritage, always in a process of change and evolution.