Organization of User-Generated Information in Image Collections and Impact of Rhetorical Mechanisms

摘要

To collect information with crowdsourcing is a popular method for cultural heritage institutions. User comments in free-text format are especially propagated as empowering users and their influence on cultural heritage. However, in adjusting user-created information to suit the collection management system in use, rhetorical mechanisms of the system have impact on the moderation of the information. This article investigates how rhetorical mechanisms of information systems influence user-generated information and users' possibilities of impacting heritage collections. The results are based on twelve interviews with professionals working with administration of user-comments in cultural-heritage image collections, covering six different systems. Several rhetorical mechanisms of the systems were identified based on professionals' statements about how systems affected decisions made in the moderation process. This article shows that the design of collection management systems can cause user-generated information to be discriminated and lead to decreased data reliability, searchability, and even loss of crowdsourced data. In particular, personal memories and perspectives are among the types of information that are most negatively affected. To conclude, collecting user comments is a problematic method to use in adding multiple perspectives to cultural heritage collections and demands carefully designed collection management systems in order to avoid distortion of user-created information.