The role of preserved cities' websites in patrimonial education

Abstract

It is the goal of this article to demonstrate the role that websites of respective cities included on UNESCO's World Heritage List plays in patrimonial education. In response to the question of what motivates this research, the investigation is driven by the hypothesis that social representations of these cities found on websites contribute to the understanding of those cities in the context of patrimonial education. Guided by that hypothesis, the article's argument is grounded in the following concepts: patrimonial education, such as that emerging from patrimonial theories and letters; websites, understood as the most recent narrative illustrations of the respective cities; and social representations, such as those advocated by Moscovici. Through the exploration of the above concepts, this article presents a method of detection for social representations of preserved cities in websites. Such a method is applied in the empirical approach to the research that investigates the websites of two preserved cities in the state of Minas Gerais: Ouro Preto and Diamantina. Once the social representations for each city are found, the article then explores how these representations effect the understanding and patrimonial education of each city. After confirming the initial hypothesis, the article concludes by presenting the principal contributions of the websites in the understanding of the respective preserved cities and by revealing the challenges of new media in the various fields of patrimonial education.