Cultural Rights and Digital Discoverability
Faced with the failure of many institutional digital cultural strategies, cultural rights and its corollary cultural democracy seem to me to be very constructive tools. Here’s how.
Limits and opportunities of digital discoverability policies
The question of digital discoverability of cultural content reveals a striking paradox: while cultural institutions invest massively in digitization and online distribution, their content remains largely invisible in the digital ocean. This invisibility is not accidental; it results, in my view, from a rather fundamental misunderstanding of the very nature of digital space, which is above all a territory of cultural democracy, onto which we project the old models of cultural democratization.
Issue 64 of the journal l’Observatoire from July 2025, focused on the subject of digital discoverability, offers very valuable insights, of which here is a brief synthesis. I add here some methodological principles that I think are complementary.
Summary of issue 64 of the journal l’Observatoire
Digital discoverability today represents one of the major challenges for cultural actors, well beyond simply putting content online. The environment is dominated by a few giant platforms and their algorithmic logics. It is no longer enough to produce and distribute; one must understand and master the mechanisms that allow a work to be found, recommended and encountered by audiences who were not necessarily looking for it.
This notion of discoverability fundamentally redefines the relationship between creation, distribution and cultural reception. The algorithms of major platforms, by systematically favoring popular content according to engagement maximization logics, create a funnel effect that can marginalize cultural, linguistic and territorial diversity. Faced with this concentration, cultural actors must rethink their strategies by understanding that the new “gatekeepers” are not exclusively algorithmic. Human intermediaries, playlist curators, digital strategists, labels, distributors, retain determining prescriptive power, creating opportunities for negotiation and partnership whose geometry varies according to territories, available means and the strength of mobilized professional networks.
The response to these challenges cannot be solely defensive or technical. It requires a multiple strategic approach that articulates several levels of action. At the level of content itself, metadata enrichment, multiplication of formats and distribution channels become essential skills. But this technical dimension must be accompanied by strong territorial anchoring. Local authorities emerge as key actors when they develop alternative local platforms, support participatory heritage initiatives and create mechanisms, such as the Cultural Pass for example, which favors local networking of young people and cultural actors.
The most promising innovation perhaps lies in the emergence of participatory models that challenge the traditional passivity of the cultural consumer. The co-production of discoverability, which actively involves audiences in structuring discovery paths, in enriching metadata or in algorithmic experiments, opens new perspectives. This approach transforms users into active allies, capable not only of prescribing but also of co-constructing distribution and indexing strategies. Examples of collaborative writing platforms like Wattpad or AO3 show how these spaces can favor the representation of identity and cultural diversities while functioning as living archives for specific communities.
This transformation is part of the broader framework of cultural rights, where discoverability becomes an issue of participation in cultural life, access to one’s own culture and discovery of that of others. The legal principles of non-discrimination, equity, transparency and explicability offer levers to negotiate with platforms and guarantee diversity of access in the face of risks of algorithmic manipulation. This legal and political dimension should not be neglected by cultural actors, who can rely on these frameworks to defend their interests and those of their audiences.
The battle for discoverability thus opens to a profound mutation of the cultural sector in the digital field. It calls on cultural actors to develop new strategic intelligence, combining technical expertise, territorial anchoring and citizen mobilization. It is no longer just about adapting to dominant platforms but actively participating in building a more equitable and diversified digital cultural ecosystem. This approach requires going beyond sectoral logics to invest in the fields of training, media education and digital inclusion, among others.
The fundamental challenge for cultural actors is therefore to understand that discoverability is neither a simple technical problem nor an economic fatality, but a battleground for diversity, inclusion and citizen participation in cultural life. In this context, their role evolves: they become active mediators between works and audiences, architects of hybrid strategies combining dominant platforms and local alternatives, and catalysts for citizen participation. This transformation certainly requires new skills and resources, but it also opens unprecedented opportunities to rethink the relationship between creation, distribution and cultural reception in the contemporary digital environment.
Three pioneering public service institutions
Three emblematic examples illustrate how public institutions in France have been able to invest in digital to broaden access to culture:
- The Bibliothèque nationale de France revolutionized access to written heritage with Gallica, its digital library launched in 1997, which today offers more than 10 million digitized documents (medieval manuscripts, rare books, ancient maps and periodicals) constituting one of the most important digital heritage collections in the world and serving as an international model for the democratization of knowledge.
- The Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA) was created on January 1, 1975, as part of the audiovisual reform carried out by the law of August 7, 1974. Its public platform, www.ina.fr, which makes its archives accessible online, was opened in 2006, after a vast digitization project of the collections. Its success was immediate and immense. This platform makes accessible a unique corpus that mixes political, social and cultural history of France. Furthermore, INA’s work is not limited to archiving; it integrates editorialization and pedagogical and scientific uses, making these audiovisual resources a tool for researchers, teachers and the general public. The institution thus embodies a public policy where collective memory and digital innovation feed each other.
- The Franco-German channel Arte also pioneered in the field of digital culture with the launch of Arte LiveWeb in 2007, which became Arte Concert in 2009. This pioneering platform in live and on-demand streaming of live performances (concerts, operas, theater) prefigured current uses of cultural streaming. By offering creative content specifically designed for the web, interactive documentaries and transmedia experiences, Arte not only provided new visibility to the European cultural scene but also managed to attract a younger and international audience. By positioning itself very early on free cultural streaming, the channel affirmed its vocation as a European public service and established itself as a reference in terms of bold and quality digital editorial policy.
However, beyond these flagship examples and some scattered experiences, often serious but rarely sustainable, reflection remains weak, and this recurrently. Yet researchers are working hard, as for example during the last “Carrefour de l’agrégation” in June 2025, whose goal was for all information on French cultural heritage to be organized, shared and accessible in a modern and efficient way, both for citizens and for institutions and researchers. The aim is to ensure that France and Europe remain at the forefront of the dissemination and circulation of cultural heritage in digital space, while guaranteeing the reliability and security of data. It was very concretely about discussing the adoption of common standards, such as LIDO-MC, which enable interoperability, that is to say connecting information between institutions, making heritage more visible and easily usable, and technically supporting the possible development of innovative services at all levels of society.
The most glaring example of this gap is the recurrence of institutional YouTube channels created by cultural venues as if by obligation. Most of them are deserted in terms of audience and interactions. They consume considerable time and resources for a derisory result: their content, however qualitative it may be, ends up drowned in the immensity of the platform. They fail to constitute a real cultural place online, notably because they neglect a fundamental dimension of cultural engagement: its territorial anchoring. This symptomatic aberration clearly shows, in my view, an almost complete misunderstanding of the real potential of digital discoverability.
The confusion between democratization and cultural democracy
I am convinced that what these approaches lack, despite their sincerity and the efforts invested, is taking into account the specific nature of digital space. This space is not a simple distribution channel; it is, by essence, a place of cultural democracy, and not of cultural democratization like traditional physical places. A theater, a museum or an art center are spaces of democratization: works, shows, workshops led by professionals are offered to the public. It is a transmission, an enrichment that can be qualified as intransitive, because it operates mainly from top (the institution, the artist) to bottom (the public). This approach has all its value, but it cannot be transposed as such into digital space.
Digital space, the web in its entirety, operates on a radically different paradigm. It enacts cultural democracy, a principle where everyone can not only consult, but also and above all contribute, create, comment, aggregate, and form communities of interest and practice. Notoriety does not respond to the same criteria of historical or institutional legitimacy, symbolized by prestigious buildings, for example. On the Internet, anyone can, with a simple phone, create content and achieve phenomenal success on a platform like TikTok, sometimes generating more audience and value than professionally matured projects. As theorized by American sociologist Henry Jenkins, we have moved from a culture of consumption to a “culture of participation” where the distinction between producer and consumer blurs.
This is not at all about devaluing the work of professionals, but about noting a paradigm shift. The pyramidal and hierarchical structure of cultural democratization is replaced, online, by a flourishing horizontality. Enrichment becomes transitive: we learn from each other, in permanent reciprocity. This is why the simple translation of content from walls to screen, for example, filming a meeting with a director and posting it on YouTube, does not work. A meeting with the director in the hall can work very well, because there is co-presence, but captured as such and broadcast on the Internet, it loses its meaning (apart from its archival value).
For a refoundation through cultural rights: towards truly digital public policies
If we want public cultural policies to successfully invest in this new space, it is imperative to accept its intrinsic rules, which are those of cultural democracy. This framework of thought is remarkably well formalized by cultural rights, notably in the Fribourg Declaration (2007), which stipulates that “every person, both alone and in common, has the right to access cultural heritage and to enrich it”. It is from this methodological approach that we can imagine and build true digital cultural spaces, in my view.
I recently proposed, in the article Cultural Rights and Digital several very concrete and territorialized work tracks for implementing digital cultural policies. I do not claim to provide ready-made recipes or universal solutions, this would be contrary to the very spirit of cultural rights. Rather, it is about respecting the cultural identities of the people we wish to address, in their extreme diversity, to invent specific devices, adapted projects, new ideas. The methodological entry I propose here aims to help make possible a real public cultural policy mission in the digital field. It does not dictate how or what to do, but defines the type of approach necessary to be able to act effectively.
The requirement for free and external evaluation
The adoption of a perspective based on cultural rights can completely revolutionize many dogmas and working methods that have been legitimate until now. This transformation requires a critical and distanced look at our practices. To be truly in an approach of cultural democracy, we need evaluations conducted by people external to the stakes of our projects, freed from the biases of “wanting to do well” or constraints imposed by our financial partners and our supervisions.
It seems essential to me to set up evaluation and progressive validation instances led by people who have no institutional stake in the success or failure of our approaches. This freedom of perspective constitutes a sine qua non condition for overcoming current limits and inventing new forms of digital cultural action.
Daring the paradigm shift
The digital discoverability of cultural content cannot be reduced to a simple technical question of online visibility. It fundamentally questions our very conception of public cultural action in the digital age. The necessary transition from democratization to cultural democracy implies accepting a redistribution of legitimacies, a horizontalization of exchanges, a recognition of the diversity of cultural expressions.
This paradigm shift, demanding and very destabilizing, nevertheless constitutes the indispensable condition for public cultural policies to regain their relevance in digital space. It is not about abandoning the traditional missions of cultural democratization, still important (but not sufficient) in physical spaces, but about developing in parallel an approach adapted to the specificities of digital, based on cultural rights and the active participation of all actors.
The challenge goes far beyond the mere question of the effectiveness of public investments. It touches on the capacity of our societies to maintain a living cultural diversity in the face of the monopolistic logics of major digital platforms. As UNESCO states in its Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005), “cultural diversity constitutes a common heritage of humanity and should be celebrated and preserved for the benefit of all”. This preservation now necessarily passes through a reinvention of our digital cultural policies in light of cultural rights. It is therefore at this price, that of humility and radical openness, so difficult to implement within teams already constituted by professionals trained in other “values,” that we can finally provide our cultural policies with a true and powerful mission in the digital universe.
The “cultural rights”, which derive from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are a concept developed and defended by researchers, sociologists, philosophers, political leaders and actors of the cultural world. Present in a certain number of articles of law since 2001, the cultural rights aim at highlighting and formalizing, in order to be able to make them operative, the principles of a “cultural democracy”. To summarize it quickly, it is a question of each person being able to give value to his or her personal culture, in order to be able to exercise his or her citizenship: to express himself or herself, to defend his or her point of view, to create, to develop his or her practices, to have access to a cultural diversity, etc. Cultural rights operate in a much wider field than that of the strict cultural sector.
The notion of “cultural rights” is present in France in the laws NOTRe (2015) and LCAP (2016). It is carried by a delegation of the Ministry of Culture (General Delegation for transmission, territories, since January 1, 2021).
Paradoxically, cultural rights are difficult to implement in the cultural sector, which is traditionally rather attached to “cultural democratization”: one often defends the idea of the transmission to the public of works of art of the best possible quality, according to a principle of hierarchy of “cultural values”. Thus, the cultural rights can be lived by certain professionals of the culture as a dangerous dynamics for the Art, a tendency towards the amateur practices, which is not the case.
In my point of view, which is that of a practitioner/researcher in the cultural field, cultural rights are above all a practice, an exercise of democracy in the very methods of organization of the work, of the relation to the other and of the place of each one, the choices of programming, the methods of mediation and animation of workshops, the mode of territorial inscription of the cultural policy, etc.
I propose in this section concrete working methods for good practices of implementation of cultural rights, based on my field experiences, as well as a sharing of more theoretical reflections, in the framework of my own research on cultural rights.
I place myself in the filiation of thinkers like John Dewey. But cultural rights cannot be presented without mentioning Patrice Meyer-Bisch, Jean-Michel Lucas, Christelle Blouët, the “Fribourg Declaration”, etc.
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Transmitting cultural rights: a question of coherence
What facilitation methods reveal about our relationship with people.
How can we talk about cultural democracy within an authoritarian framework? How can we defend respect for each person’s culture while imposing a (…) -
The political dimension of organisational frameworks
When forms contradict intentions: organising cultural democracy.
We talk about cultural democracy, horizontality, cultural rights. But the concrete frameworks we put in place often tell a very different story. (…) -
Will Heritage Still Be Part of Our Lives in 2045?
Digitising collections is not enough: the challenge is to enable their appropriation by citizens.
Cultural practices in 2045 will be as different from ours as ours are from those of 2005. At that time, YouTube did not exist, no one had a (…) -
The Representation of One’s Cultural Role
What the Association of French Mayors survey reveals about the cultural imaginary of local authorities.
What do we presuppose when we speak of “audiences distant from culture”? The AMF survey, read as an anthropological document, unveils the (…) -
Algorithms and Cultural Rights
How algorithms, far from confining us, implement cultural rights through democratic discoverability based on metadata.
Algorithms are regularly criticized as tools that supposedly lock us into “filter bubbles.” We must free ourselves from them, we are told. Yet (…) -
Domination at the Heart of Culture
How laudatory terms mask power relations in the cultural sector.
The praise we bestow upon “great artists” reveals, beneath its flattering appearances, a structure of domination. Behind admiration lies the (…) -
Making Room for Adolescents: Rethinking Our Approaches in Cultural Action
From democratisation to cultural democracy.
Cultural action and mediation with adolescents challenge the foundations of our practices: between framework and transgression, between physical (…) -
Symbolization as a tool for mobilization
When the collective and digital traces build cultural engagement.
Faced with an abundance of digital cultural practices, cultural venues struggle to mobilize “audiences.” I argue here that this difficulty does (…) -
Legitimate participation as the horizon of cultural events
From legitimacy to participate: how cultural rights transform our practices.
Cultural rights are often misunderstood. Their strength lies in their capacity to transform our practices: moving from a top-down programming (…) -
The Accelerated Eye
Manifesto for a new ecology of the gaze.
What if speed were not the enemy of culture, but the instrument of a new form of sensitive intelligence? A radical reappropriation of our right to (…) -
Authorizing Creation
For a radical democratization of the creative act.
How can artistic creation become a political act of collective emancipation? By carrying within itself, in its form and process, the authorization (…) -
Creative Freedom and Cultural Rights
A dialectic at the heart of cultural policies.
French cultural policy today finds itself at the crossroads of two fundamental principles, both enshrined in law: creative freedom and cultural (…) -
Cultural Rights in Light of Personal History
At the beginning of my journey as an engaged cultural actor.
The question of cultural rights has long shaped my commitment, well before the term came to light. Through my story, I attempt to show how a (…) -
Cooperative Narratives
Creating polyphonic narrative devices to transform academic knowledge into living and operative knowledge.
How can we overcome the limits of academic narrative to create truly shared knowledge? A concrete experience of collective writing devices that (…) -
The myth of recognition through cultural democratization
Rethinking artistic value beyond systems of domination.
Artistic recognition is less about talent than about a social game that some refuse to participate in. A reflection on alternative paths to (…) -
Cultural Rights and Digital Discoverability
For a cultural policy adapted to digital spaces.
Faced with the failure of many institutional digital cultural strategies, cultural rights and its corollary cultural democracy seem to me to be (…) -
Freedom and Cultural Rights
A renewed approach to democratic dignity, through the contribution of two new rights.
Cultural rights, seemingly guarantors of human dignity, are emptied of their meaning when they fail to forcefully articulate the question of (…) -
Cultural Rights and Digital Technology
Rethinking digital tools in service of cultural democracy.
How can digital technology become a lever for cultural emancipation rather than an instrument of dependence? I propose a digital implementation of (…) -
The specter of the other
From anxious dehumanization to confident recognition.
How can the other, a subject of rights, become a threatening figure? A reflection born from a confrontation with reality, beyond the fantasies and (…) -
Cultural data and cultural rights
For an inclusive heritage democracy in the digital age.
Citizen cultural data is tomorrow’s heritage. Their recognition and preservation constitute a major democratic challenge for building a (…) -
Corporate memory at the service of cultural rights
Rethinking the relationship between cultural venues and people.
Cultural institutions, through their failure to collect and care for data, forget those they welcome, denying their dignity. This amnesia (…) -
Cultural rights and preservation of digital heritage
Bernard Stiegler’s technical philosophy sheds political light.
Have you ever tried to find a video you loved on YouTube from ten years ago? A blog post that made an impression on you? Your friends’ photos on (…) -
Artistic Legitimization, Cultural Rights, and Construction of the Individual
Between horizontality and the need for recognition.
Artistic legitimization, between traditional hierarchies and new digital forms, questions individual and collective recognition. By intersecting (…) -
Cultural rights and the “fight” against the far right
How to rebuild democracy in our cultural spaces.
How the discourse of “fighting against the far right” stigmatizes voters, compromises democratic dialogue and becomes hate speech. It would be (…) -
Architecture of artistic venues and cultural rights
The impact of location on social roles.
The architecture of cultural venues shapes roles and often limits participation. An approach inspired by digital spaces would enable cultural (…) -
Strategy, design and technical implementation of the “Azimut” platform
The resource portal for artistic practices.
I am supporting and leading, on behalf of the MPAA, in its current phase, the strategy, design, and technical implementation of this platform, (…) -
Synthesis of the seminar: “What pedagogy by and for cultural rights?”
Organized by UFISC, Opale, Réseau Culture 21, Observatoire des politiques culturelles, Laboratoire des droits culturels and Ligue de l’enseignement (February 6, 2025).
Workshop to find out what stage the partners had reached in their work on the “cultural rights” certification referential project in the context (…) -
Conference: “EAC and cultural rights: convergences to be identified and implemented”
Dans le cadre des Rencontres territoriales “Artistic and cultural education & Territorial cultural projects” (Foix, February 5, 2025).
How can cultural rights be a tool for better implementation of artistic and cultural education projects? And how we can identify convergences (…) -
Cultural rights and professional postures
Tools for the concrete implementation of cultural rights.
Cultural rights, stemming from the Fribourg Declaration (2007), represent a major advancement for cultural democracy. However, their practical (…) -
“Cultural rights” creative writing seminar
Master Arts du Spectacle, université de Caen Normandie 2021-2022-2023-2024.
A practical seminar on digital writing, with the theme of cultural rights. Students approach writing in the contemporary sense of the term, (…) -
“On the ineffectiveness of our works in real life”.
Commentary on the text by Eva Doumbia & Kader Attia (2023).
In July 2023, visual artist Kader Attia and director Eva Doumba published a text (in Analyse Opinion Critique) in response to the youth “riots” (…) -
Artistic creation in a digital environment
Commentary on the report commissioned by DRAC Bretagne (August 2023).
A study on the subject of digital and artistic creation reveals, through its unquestioned biases, the unconscious desire not to move the lines of (…) -
Digital technology, a tool for mediation and cultural democracy
Webinar on Monday, October 9, 2023 from 10am to 1pm.
Restitution of the “Digital Workshops” project by Cultures du Cœur and Benoît Labourdette Production, offered as part of the Été culturel program (…) -
Itinéraire bis, the path of cultural rights
Action research conducted by the MPAA (Paris).
Accompaniment in the animation, production of traces and fabrication of the web platform resources of the research-action “Itinéraire bis, chemin (…) -
Raising awareness of cultural rights - Nantes métropole (September 30, 2022)
Co-design and co-hosting of a one-day event for Nantes’ cultural players.
Taking ownership of cultural rights concepts and approaches through cooperative creativityA small group of cultural players from Nantes, led (…) -
Analyze your project using the Fribourg Declaration
Working method
How to set in motion an approach open to cultural rights, that is to say, to put more democracy in the projects and the relationship with the (…) -
John Dewey : an inspirer of cultural rights?
Sharing my interest in an inspiring personality.
The notion of “cultural rights” is increasingly present in the debates within the cultural sector. They are seen by many as being at the heart of (…) -
Professional meeting “Public participation”: presentation by Benoît Labourdette
Interview of Benoît Labourdette by Jean-Yves de Lépinay (11’37s, 2020).
Sharing examples of audiovisual creation workshops conducted in the spirit of cultural rights: moving from “participation” to “interaction.” (…) -
“Cultural participation”: interview with Benoît Labourdette.
Interview with Benoît Labourdette (4’39s, 2020).
Video presentation of Benoît Labourdette’s approach to the democratic dimension of cultural action. -
Research-action “Image Education 2.1”
Collaborative action-research project led by Benoît Labourdette production in 2018 and 2019, to develop the synergy between teenage cinema (…)
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Cultural Rights and Digital Technology
Rethinking digital tools in service of cultural democracy.
How can digital technology become a lever for cultural emancipation rather than an instrument of dependence? I propose a digital implementation of (…) -
Helping professionals design new types of projects adapted to the needs of young people Laboratory for an original training and project development program.
In the face of young people’s indifference toward institutional culture, I propose exploring an innovative training framework aimed at helping (…) -
The marginality of cultural institutions Lucidity of a paradigm shift.
Traditional cultural institutions, once central, have become marginal in the face of digital practices that now dominate citizens’ attention. This (…) -
Cultural data and cultural rights For an inclusive heritage democracy in the digital age.
Citizen cultural data is tomorrow’s heritage. Their recognition and preservation constitute a major democratic challenge for building a (…) -
For a virtuous dispersal of the cultural sector The end of traditional cultural influence.
The cultural sector is going through a major crisis that reveals a paradigm shift. In my opinion, we must now cultivate culture everywhere, in all (…)
