IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section B

Abstract

YouTube search engine result pages (SERPs) have become sites of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) that circulate dominant ICH representations. Via the case of Turkey’s Mevlevi Sema (whirling dervish) ceremony (Sema), this paper investigates the effects of YouTube SERP dissemination of dominant ICH representations in regard to official ICH promoted by national governments and the unofficial ICH of unrepresented communities. The Turkish government through UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the ICH (Convention), safeguards the Sema (2008), as exclusively male, claiming that the public presence of women corrupts its authenticity. Behind the discourse of authenticity, the Turkish government safeguards the Sema as masculine to further Sunni Islam in the nation. The Turkish-government produced UNESCO YouTube Sema video (2009) reinforces their position. This official representation conforms to the dominant YouTube representation of the Sema as a male practice. Specific communities in Turkey challenge this official representation by integrating women in public Sema performances, which they also promote on YouTube. Their challenge is also justified by authenticity discourses, legitimizing women dervishes. The outcome of this paper is to ascertain whether the unofficial community dissemination of ICH practices on YouTube SERPs can effectively negotiate or oppose dominant ICH YouTube representations that align with official ICH. This is achieved via a mixed methodology: theoretical and historical research, community ethnographic research and a qualitative SERP digital method. This method integrates in the analysis the inherent instability of SERPs and their complex structures, that combine keywords, metadata, thumbnails, video content, personalization algorithms, ranking, scrolling and business models.