The design and use of metadata is always culturally, socially, and ideologically inflected. The actors, whether these are institutions (museums, archives, libraries, corporate image suppliers) or individuals (image producers, social media agents, researchers), as well as their agendas and interests, affect the character of metadata. There is a politics of metadata. This issue of Digital Culture & Society addresses the ideological and political aspects of metadata practices within image collections from an interdisciplinary perspective. The overall aim is to consider the implications, tensions, and challenges involved in the creation of metadata in terms of content, structure, searchability, and diversity.

Anna Dahlgren is a professor of art history at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University. She has written extensively on different aspects of photography and visual culture, the digital turn, archives, and museum practices. She is PI of the project The Politics of Metadata researching metadata practices in cultural heritage institutions' image collections online, funded by the Swedish Research Council. Karin Hansson, is an associate professor in computer and systems sciences and part of the Politics of Metadata project at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University. She has written extensively about technology-based participation from a design perspective. Ramón Reichert (Dr. phil.) works as a European project researcher at the University of Lancaster within the Erasmus+ program. He is the program director of the M.Sc. Data Studies at Danube University Krems, Austria. He is a lecturer at the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and a lecturer in Contextual Studies at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. }Amanda Wasielewski is a postdoctoral researcher in art history and part of the Politics of Metadata project at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University. Wasielewski has taught social media and internet studies at the University of Amsterdam, architectural history at the Spitzer School of Architecture, and modern art history at Lehman College.