ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a study of how metadata shapes the conditions of cultural heritage representation, focusing on Sami images in the online archive of the Swedish National Heritage Board. Datasets from the in-house database Kulturmiljöbild and the social media platform Flickr Commons are gathered and interpreted using cross-disciplinary methods within a framework of critical data studies where participation and performativity are key. The study uncovers how different metadata structures and practices facilitate different narratives that both hide and highlight Sami markers. Four workaround strategies in relation to diversity are identified, i.e., means to resolve or bypass limitations to the spectrum of perspectives expressed in image descriptions: omission, abstraction, translation, and hyperbole. This typology demonstrates how metadata affects diversity by governing image searches online textually and visually, thus contributing important insights into the rhetorical dynamic between interface and infrastructure in archives where dominant narratives are limiting commitments to diversity.
