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Since 2003, UNESCO has promoted and protected the function and values of intangible heritage. A method of safeguarding employed by UNESCO is the storage of videos of immaterial heritage on YouTube. Individuals have also been producing videos of the very practices sanctioned by UNESCO and uploading them to this website. The combining of UNESCO and user-generated heritage videos is producing informal archives of digital heritage. This exploration of YouTube as an archive of intangible heritage examines whether social archiving has the potential to counter official heritage narratives that can reproduce distinctions based upon gender. The capacity of social archiving to challenge gendered divisions is examined through the Mevlevi Sema (or whirling dervish) ceremony of Turkey, safeguarded by UNESCO in 2005. This research, which integrates social media and archive studies with actual and virtual ethnography, considers technical aspects including algorithms as well as social and cultural facets of digital media.
Sheenagh Pietrobruno (Sun,) studied this question.