• 1 The notion of renewal is operative in thinking about the transformations linked to digital techno (...)
• 2 We apprehend the digital interpretation assistance tools deployed by museums and heritage sites (...)
• 3 Nicolas Navarro and Lise Renaud, “Fantasmagorie du musée: vers une visite numérique et récréativ (...)

1If public participation is not a recent issue within cultural institutions is rooted in cultural democratisation policies, it has been so successful in recent years that it has become an essential element in museum and heritage policies and management. Various initiatives presented as participative approaches capable of weaving a new relationship with the cultural institution are proliferating in heritage sites (Museomix, Hackathons, etc.). Visibility of the public’s contribution meets the deployment of digital tools for cultural mediation in a constructive way. The “renewal” of heritage mediation through digital technology1 has led cultural institutions since the 1980s to increase their production of digital editorial products and to deploy a wide range of computer media2 designed to assist in heritage interpretation (cultural CD-ROM, digital cartels, interactive table, digital models, mobile applications for tours). The deployment of these media is in line with the promise of a transformation of transforming the visitor’s experience due to the modernisation of the communication model of the cultural visit itself. Thus, in promotional statements, the visitor is presented as the “actor” of his visit—as if he was not before—and the visit experience is described as “immersive,” “interactive” and “playful.” Although this mechanical effect is far from proven, it is the basis for the deployment of mobile applications for visits and their promotion.3

• 4 Yves Jeanneret, Critique de la trivialité. Les médiations de la communication, enjeu de pouvoir, (...)

2In this context, looking at the way in which the relationship with the visitor is defined through the visitor assistant applications can allow us to qualify the way in which institutions conceive public participation dynamics in heritage discourse production. Such an approach acknowledges the relevance of the notion of involvement to grasp mediated interaction. Implication is then to be understood as “the set of specific and practical features that define the possibilities offered to the public to take part in the communication and the circulation of texts.”4 In other words, instead of simply assuming the participatory dimension of self-proclaimed “collaborative” or “participatory” projects, we consider it more relevant to question the way in which a representation of cultural participation can be constructed through the analysis of digital heritage projects themselves. In the case of mobile applications dedicated to visit assistance, what are the relational models proposed to the public? How is the latter involved and what status or functions are attributed to visitors in relation to heritage discourse? Are they given a role in the process of heritage conservation or is the public’s participation only a rhetorical formula aiming at valorising a cultural offer?

• 5 This selection was made within the framework of the AP-PAT research project (on mobile applicati (...)

3This questioning was put to the test with an exploratory sample5 of mobile application projects for heritage visits, selected for their heterogeneity. It includes a variety heritage types (built, urban, natural; diversity of historical period), territorial scale concerned (monuments in cross-border area), conditions of production and distribution (individual, city or foundation projects). Four applications were selected: the HistoPad of the Palais des papes, Mes calanques, Traverse and Vichy 1939-1945. The following table provides some contextual information for each one of the four cases:

• 6 Yves Jeanneret, Critique de la trivialité. Les médiations de la communication, enjeu de pouvoir, (...)
• 7 The notion of “screen writing” (écrit d’écran) allows to makes it possible to situate computer s (...)

4The analysis of these applications aims at characterising the communicative models that are embedded in them. In short, the task is to identify the way in which these tools—starting from the interfaces and editorial functions provided in the application—and the narratives supporting them, create a certain representation of cultural participation. Participation is indeed elaborated through a variety of “promises” but also through different “involvement” processes6 (editorial functions, injunctive discourses, etc.). It is therefore not a question of starting from predefined and instituted forms of participation but rather of understanding how this participation is structured and instrumented through this logic of “involvement” of the application’s user. From a methodological point of view, the ethno-semiotic approach of the research concerns both the presentation of the applications (websites, promotional videos, press kits, press releases, descriptions in the download platforms) and the narratives supported by the design of the screen writings.7 The circulating narratives were also completed by an interview campaign these devices’ various contributors (heritage institutions, funders, local authorities, digital companies). The data collected was analysed according to three main axes of involvement: rhetoric (identification of valorisation strategies, recurrent formulas), enunciation within the applications (editorial principles, enunciative postures), representations of the public, relations with heritage and the role of the cultural institution.

• 8 Joëlle Le Marec, Publics et musées, la confiance éprouvée, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2007; Lucie Daigna (...)
• 9 Gustavo Gomez-Mejia, “Fragments sur le partage photographique. Choses vues sur Facebook ou Twitte (...)

5The analysis thus shows at a first level, in line with research carried out over the last few years in museology in particular,8 that participation and the rhetoric of “sharing”9 constitute a recurrent argument for institutions to position themselves publicly as being in tune with the times and taking their audience(s) into account. At a second level, three forms of involvement could be identified relying on different conceptions of institutional relationships and heritage conservation. They reflect the diversity of the participative projects at work, a diversity that calls for a reconsideration of the communicative models expressed by these applications.

• 10 The notion of “formula” has been defined by Alice Krieg-Planque as “a set of formulations which, (...)

6Whereas the digital applications we studied are diversified, the rhetoric of their presentation has a certain homogeneity in the foundations of its argumentation. We can notice the recurrence of arguments which are comparable to formulas.10 These can easily be found in the media discourse, but they are also used in interviews with the designers. Of course, the stakeholders in these projects logically orient their arguments in such a way as to highlight the result, namely the digital application—the aim is to promote it—, but the assumptions on which the argument is based show a similarity in the display of a strategy of transformation and institutional renewal.

• 11 [Online] https://avignon-tourisme.com/activites/palais-des-papes/ [accessed 15 September 2020].
• 12 Presentation of Traverse app on the Facim foundation website: [online] https://fondation-facim.fr (...)
• 13 Press conference held on May 17, 2019.

7The promises that come with the promotion of these applications convey the idea that their use allows a transformation of visiting practices to take place. This editorial product is regularly presented in terms of modernity and innovation: “Offering the HistoPad to each visitor to the Palais […] is to offer the best of modern museography, a true revolution that resolutely transforms the way in which heritage is discovered.”11 As for the Traverse application, it claims to offer “New formats for experiencing culture. Thanks to innovative digital technologies, everyone is invited to create their own visiting experience, using content provided by specialists.”12 And in the press release of Mes Calanques application one can read: “With the release of Mes Calanques, the territory of the National Park affirms itself as a melting pot of innovative solutions for the preservation of biodiversity.”13 These examples seem to show that visit application, through their digital format, almost automatically bring novelty and modernity. This kind of rhetoric has the advantage of building a positive image of the institution (ethos) and of its partners. It is a way of underlining their dynamism, fully in line with the times.

• 14 [Online] http://www.palais-des-papes.com/fr/content/histopad-pour-tous [accessed 15 September 2020]
• 15 [Online] http://www.calanques-parcnational.fr/fr/application-mobile-officielle-mes-calanques [acces (...)
• 16 Étienne Candel, “L’Œuvre saisie par le réseau,” Communication & langages, no. 155, 2008, p. 99-113.

9Furthermore, the promise made to the visitors through these interactive tools is to be actively involved in the visit experience and in the management of the mediation contents: the HistoPad application “allows them to live a playful and interactive visit experience”14; “With Mes Calanques, interactivity is key! The application allows to transform a simple visit in the National Park into an act of civic engagement.” The functionalities of the application allow to become “actors of the preservation of the Calanques.”15 Thus, this valorisation rhetoric is built by reversing the model of a “passive” visitor and by highlighting a more actantial communication model where the roles of transmission and reception are redistributed.16 In other words, it is a question of soliciting a communication model that goes beyond transmission (from the sender to the receiver) in order to offer another place to the public. The representation of participation produced by these models, and by these formulas, thus stages the renewal of communication between the institution and its public.

• 18 [Online] http://www.palais-des-papes.com/fr/content/histopad-pour-tous [accessed 15 September 2020]
• 19 [Online] https://www.traverse-patrimoines.com/app/ [accessed 15 September 2020].

11A few lines later, however, emphasis is placed on the individuality of visitors: “The HistoPad is a touch-sensitive tablet that is given to each visitor.”18 Similarly, the Traverse promotional website states that “everyone can experience an exciting journey through the ages,” and then that “Traverse is accessible in one click to all-time travellers ready for boarding.”19 These examples reveal the capacity of these tools to convey a message on global accessibility to culture while simultaneously promoting the individualisation of heritage practice.

• 20 In comparison, the media coverage of the Vichy 1939-1945 application is limited. The application st (...)

12In this representation, the audience, active and individualised, is designated in a generic way as a visitor or citizen (Traverses or Mes Calanques), but above all as a “user.” The application Vichy 1939-1945,20 thus refers to the audience exclusively as users of the tool. Aimed at taking a guided tour of Vichy or reading archive documents, the use of the application defines the visitor-reader as a user. This designation inscribes de facto this cultural practice in the register of the use of a tool. In short, the performance of the application, its simplicity of use and its ergonomics are a guarantee of the quality of the activities and heritage mediation proposed.

• 21 For example, the website manager uses the same structure to study ticketing statistics.

13All of these rhetorics highlight the way in which the institution considers its audience and tries to get them involved. However, behind the generic categories aiming at a global outreach, the promotion of each visit application does indicate a certain prior knowledge and conception of its audience. At this level, the study of these narratives shows a disparity of editorial choices that reflect different ways of materialising the audience’s involvement. The discourse surrounding HistoPad, for example, indicates a particular attention to foreign visitors, children and audiences with disabilities. This segmentation seems to be based on the adaptation of the content of the application to the logic of the tourism and management policy of the heritage site21 (translation into seven languages; game for children and accessibility). The categorisation logic of the “audience” in the promotion of Mes Calanques application is quite different. It is based on the construction of “thematic communities” defined according to their outdoor practices (“climbing, diving, hiking”). The participation becomes then dependent on affinities of practices but also on a degree of attachment to the heritage site.

• 22 Nathalie Heinich, Des valeurs. Une approche sociologique, Paris, Gallimard, 2017.

15Beyond the identification of the communication elements, the coupled analysis of the application’s interfaces and their supporting narratives bring to light the figuration of the relationship between the institution and its audience. This relationship, although rarely qualified as “participative,” nonetheless orchestrates the involvement of the different stakeholders. Beyond the multiplicity of functionalities at work, this relationship appears to be inscribed in a diversity of value systems that underpin the individual’s relationship to art,22 culture and heritage.

• 24 André Gunthert, L’Image partagée. La photographie numérique, Paris, Textuel, 2015.
• 25 Camille Alloing and Julien Pierre, Le Web affectif. Une économie numérique des émotions, Bry-sur (...)

18Photography appears to be the favoured medium for expressing and sharing emotions within the computerised media.24 This functionality can be found in Histopad where the Histomaton allows, on the model of the photo-booth, to take a customized picture of oneself in a historical decor, and to send the image by e-mail in order to share it. This reliance on emotion aims to keep track of the visit and to share it as a sensible experience. This logic is in line with the “visit experience” standpoint, specific to museology, while giving an important place to the emotional or “affective” logic, close to that of the social media of digital industries.25

• 26 Jacqueline Eidelman and Mélanie Roustan, “Les études de publics: recherche fondamentale, choix d (...)

20This process can take many forms: in Histopad, the public is invited to write their opinion in the manner of a guest book (accessible on the application at the end of the visit to the Palais du Papes). In other cases, users are asked to “give their opinion” (Vichy 1939-1945), to share their “impressions” (Traverse), or to rate the application on the stores’ platforms (Google Play Store, App Store). While the topic of satisfaction has become a new paradigm in audience research (so-called “satisfaction” studies), it reflects above all the demand for performance in cultural and heritage institutions, in response to the growing importance of new public management models.26 But the rating system also represents a system for interaction writing within digital platforms.

• 27 Gustavo Gomez-Mejia, “Fragments sur le partage photographique. Choses vues sur Facebook ou Twitter, (...)

21Therefore, this figuration of a sensitive and affective relation between the institution and its public is inscribed at the same time in the institutional dynamics of the cultural and patrimonial world and in the logic of computer-based media writing. It highlights an understanding of participation essentially coincident based on the idea of “sharing” (sharing an emotion, a satisfaction), which tends to “euphemize and euphorize content production and distribution.”27 This conception of participation, related to the generic figure of the “user” or to the mirage of the “general public,” orchestrates a sensitive relationship with heritage and its accessibility to all.

• 28 Presentation of Traverse application on the App Store

24Involvement of the user then mostly implies the acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the knowledge disseminated by the institution, an acknowledgement orchestrated by the diffusion and editing of contents by the public itself. By sharing content provided by the institution, the user in fact acknowledges its legitimacy. Circulation is possible at a first level by disseminating content directly from the interface of the applications to the social media or by e-mail (Traverse, Vichy 1939-1945). At a second level, the editing of content is made possible by the creation of playlists, as is the case for the Traverse application: “Keep in mind the stories you like, arrange the cards you liked according to your preferences and save them for later use.”28 From existing content made available, users can select relevant elements and thus, through the playlists created and made accessible to all, create a new narrative on heritage.

• 29 April 28, 2020, interview with the director of communications for Calanques National Park.
• 30 [Online] https://ulrichfischer.net/2019/05/20/lancement-de-raconte-moi-geneve/ [accessed 15 Septemb (...)

26However, on closer analysis, this functionality seems to suffer from the maintenance of a top-down approach on the part of the institutions, which maintain a role of moderation of the shared content. This moderation role is carried out through a distinction between public and private content, as in the Calanques National Park: “We also have a lot of private feedback, perhaps even more than public feedback. People who do not necessarily want their information to be shared in public, and who only want to share it with us.”29 At the same time, it is also a question of keeping a clear editorial line: “The user can freely explore the shared Geneva memory, while being ‘protected’ by an editorial coherence”30 (Traverse).

• 31 Jean Davallon, “À propos des régimes de patrimonialisation: enjeux et questions,” Patrimonialização (...)

27In contrast to the affective relationship to the institution, which participates to a generalised representation of the public, the register of knowledge seems to invite a more personalised relationship to heritage. By placing the personal expertise of each user’s personal expertise at the heart of the relational connection, this cognitive relationship to the heritage institution gives an insight into social appropriation of heritage by communities, in an ascending movement of heritage production.31

• 32 Joëlle Le Marec shows that, in opposition to the prevailing discourse on a feeling of mistrust towa (...)
• 33 Jacqueline Eidelman and Mélanie Roustan, “Les études de publics: recherche fondamentale, choix de p (...)

28On a final level, it is possible to identify another type of relationship between the institution and its public. This one is built on a relationship of trust,32 on a space of dialogue and reflexivity. It places the relationship to heritage in “an axiological universe as a world of values, ethics and civics, of commitment, of reflexivity…”33

• 34 Étienne Candel “Participer, faire participer: le pouvoir ambigu des formes textuelles,” opening con (...)

29Indeed, mobile applications are used by some institutions to promote dialogue with their public, but also between different publics. It is particularly the case of Mes Calanques, for which the construction of thematic communities (hikers, divers, etc.) is thought with the purpose of encouraging dialogue between peers, between citizens who are members of these communities, but also to allow a specific communication directed towards these groups. This will to establish a dialogue can be seen in the staging of an enunciation in the plural form, that is to say “the semiotization of a shared enunciation”34 in the interface of the application itself. As we can see, there is a frame dedicated to the users’ questions, and the answers of the Calanques National Park is displayed in a distinct background. This public exchange can then be commented by other users.

• 35 September 25, 2020, Interview with the founder and manager of Setavoo, development agency of the ap (...)

30In the case of the application Mes Calanques, this dialogue functionality continues and reinforces a pre-existing practice of reciprocal e-mail exchanges or telephone calls. But, above all, this feature seems to be implemented by a development agency (Setavoo) that focuses on so-called “citizen” applications. The heritage application resonates here with attempts to implement participatory democracy methods and to strengthen relations between citizens and administrations: “We thought that there was a market that would emerge for these tools, which make the dialogue easier, more constructive, and allow citizens and stakeholders to be involved in the broadest sense.”35

• 36 April 28, 2020 interview with the director of communications for Calanques National Park.
• 37 Duncan Cameron, “Le musée: un temple ou un forum” [1971], in André Desvallées (ed.), Vagues. Une an (...)

31This dialogue is designed to serve a reflexive logic. It is about allowing individuals, users, to think about the role they play in the preservation of their heritage. “And finally the objective is to allow the citizen to be confronted with a certain number of things”36 (Mes Calanques). The objective seems to be thereby to involve the user—considered here as a “citizen”—in a reflection on the common values that he or she shares with the institution, based on common reflection (evoked by the idea of “being confronted” in the previous quote) between the institution and the citizen. This logic is reminiscent of the theoretical approaches taken by the recent museology around the models of the eco-museum. But it also recalls the ideal type of the forum-museum evoked by Duncan Cameron as a place for debate through the confrontation of different points of view and experimentation.37 It therefore places the question of heritage on a political level—which is highlighted by the use of the term “citizen”—and questions its place at the heart of the development and preservation of common goods.

• 38 Duncan Cameron, “Le musée: un temple ou un forum” [1971], in André Desvallées (ed.), Vagues. Une an (...)

33These applications, which were first observed as spaces of enjoyment or sensitive experience, then as tools for learning and sharing knowledge, also have an ethical and political value. In this respect, these applications put into question the distribution of expertise and the power relationships between institutions and citizens. This is precisely stated by the team of the Parc National des Calanques: “People can express themselves, they can bring things to our attention. It’s their initiative and it’s very good. They help us to manage the territory in a certain way.”38

• 39 Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage, Abingdon/New York, Routledge, 2006; Rodney Harrison, Heritage. C (...)

34A number of studies on the process of heritage development—in particular the critical heritage studies movement39—have shown how the acknowledgement of heritage can be the object of power conflicts. In this respect, participatory dynamics can appear as the mere reproduction of a dominant position on the part of decision-making structures. The analysis of these applications does not exclude the possibility of this first scenario, but it also invites us to go beyond the idea of a single instrumentalisation of participatory processes.

• 40 Pascale Trompette and Dominique Vinck, “Retour sur la notion d'objet-frontière,” Revue d'anthropolo (...)

37It therefore seems even more relevant to take into account the context of design, production and distribution of these applications in order to better understand the “participatory project” that each one carries. In short, the projects associated with the development of these applications establish the framework for a convergence of multiple professional fields (heritage, digital, tourism, politics, etc.). Considering these applications as “objets-frontière”40 (border objects) seems to offer an interesting angle for research, allowing us to go beyond sterile oppositions between professional backgrounds, in order to better understand what is at stake in these crossings.