From Data to Situated Knowledge: Designing Metadata for Plural and Participatory Cultural Heritage

This paper investigates metadata as a cultural, situated and participatory design practice, reframing it as an interface for reappropriating minoritized and plural memories in digital cultural heritage. Against the background of national digitization strategies driven by technical efficiency and standardization, the study critically addresses the epistemic risks of abstraction and exclusion. Drawing on the notion of metadata as a co-produced narrative, the research outlines three design trajectories— generative, culturally situated and civic—emerging from a comparative analysis of over 100 design-driven case studies. Through a qualitative methodology, the study explores how metadata can become an active, affective and negotiated device for inclusion, digital literacy and memory activation, particularly in marginalized communities. The findings suggest a redefinition of metadata not as neutral descriptors but as cultural artefacts fostering relational infrastructures, inclusive knowledge production, and new modes of collective sense-making.