%0 Conference Paper
%A Garduño Freeman, Cristina
%B ICOMOS 19th General Assembly and Scientific Symposium "Heritage and Democracy"
%C New Delhi, India
%D 2018
%F icomos:2013
%K participatory culture
%K social media
%K world heritage
%K Australia
%K public participation
%K digital culture
%K community
%K public awareness
%K communication
%T Outnumbered 16:1. Evaluating the global online communities of the Sydney Opera House
%U http://openarchive.icomos.org/id/eprint/2013/
%X The exponential growth of social media platforms over the last decade has brought digital  culture and public participation to the fore in the field of heritage. Initially, social media promised to be  a panacea for democracy; enabling global communities to use digital technologies to engage with World  Heritage properties. However, the reality has turned out to be much more complex and nuanced:  challenging established national narratives; potentially infringing on copyright; blurring notions of  communities and audiences; and revealing the entanglement of tangible and intangible forms of cultural  heritage.    World Heritage is increasingly mediated by the digital sphere. In 2013 the Sydney Opera House had a  global online community of 128 million. These digital engagements outnumber in-person visits 16:1 and  have been estimated to have an economic value of $59 million AuD (Deloitte, 2013). Using the Sydney  Opera House as a case study, the paper describes public forms of participation with this place via  platforms such as YouTube, Pinterest, Wikipedia, Facebook and Flickr. Then it reflects on their  implications for the World Heritage program’s strategic objectives of ‘increasing public awareness  through communication’ and ‘enhancing the role of communities’ in its implementation. There is a  growing imperative to evaluate the digital engagements of global online communities, especially when  many of these ‘visitors’ will likely never physically set foot in the Sydney Opera House itself.