Crowdsourced Heritage Tourism Open‐Data, Small-Data and e-Participatory Practices as Innovative Tools in Alps Cultural Heritage Topic: Information Technology and e-Tourism

Abstract

Many new questions arise with regard to Web3.0‐based technologies, more and more frequently used by non‐experts to generate and share geographic information, new collective landscape visions and place‐based knowledge. This paper discusses the role of e‐participation, mapping practices and crowdsourced‐based place rating in alpine mountain areas, related to an ongoing trans‐regional European research project (Interreg Italy‐Swiss). In particular I take into account the collaborative use of ICT (such as the use of geo‐social networks) within the processes of social sharing of images related to the spreading of cultural heritage (tangible and intangible) and cultural landscapes. This allows to point out several critical issues connected to mechanisms of collective intelligence and to define how citizen science can be correctly used inside the usual processes of participation and elaboration of visual final results. Visualization is certainly a very powerful tool to improve community’s discussion on cultural tourist destinations: is it possible to relate the new forms of voluntary and involuntary micro-participation via web with alternative visualization techniques as key in promoting new forms of sustainable cultural tourism, low cost but high value‐added? Another important issue raised by this research is: which alternative knowledge of the alpine cultural landscape is useful for processes of tourism policy making that include the inhabitant’s role, expectations, know‐how and memories? The method applied in this case study was designed to support collaborative efforts, to increase public participation in problem analysis and decision‐making and to evaluate possible interactions between non‐organized forms of collective collaboration and institutional processes of transformation linked to alpine cultural tourism. Specific attention is given to the problems of ICT mediated perception and definition of shared landscape quality. In this context, the role of expert knowledge in the analysis and definition of the social perception of the cultural landscape is now changing rapidly and radically. The recent developments of the Web—namely the open‐source GIS, the collective use of GPS tracking, and the geo‐social networks—force the technicians to rely on new skills: from the cultural mediation of landscape values to the ad hoc interpretation of the new geographical information. Furthermore, local and non‐technical knowledge starts to play an increasingly important role in expanding the scope of the definitions of the alpine cultural landscapes. The social implications of this research include also the widening of the definition of the common good to a number of intangibles: the archives of spatial data managed by public authorities, the amount of data unintentionally generated through the use of mobile devices in order to build not only innovative, but effective tools for the promotion and development of the weak and peripheral territories.