What do we actually mean when we say ‘digital’?

As digital has become more embedded in everything we do, the term itself has become strangely fuzzy.

It's both everywhere and nowhere stretching across marketing and fundraising, livestreaming and production design, AI and CRM systems.

Dr Susan Oman’s 2025 report, written after a two-year visiting researcher placement at the UK government's Department of Culture, Media and Sport, identified that “‘digital culture’ was a problematic term for some interviewees. The word digital holds varied meaning, value and importance across UK  cultural sectors and funders”.

As Fiona Morris (CEO and Creative Director of UK-based sector support agency, The Space) has said “digital is a horrible word, it’s such a catchall, it’s often used to describe something when people aren’t entirely sure what they mean”, and writer and consultant Paul Boag had issues with the term as far back as 2014, “‘Digital' has become such a meaningless buzzword that it's lost all specific value”.

In more or less every conversation I have had about digital over the last year (or more), the topic of just how stretched the word 'digital' now is has come up.

I talked about it in my podcast conversation with Stuart Buchanan (where we discussed his change in job title to Head of Screen); I talked about it when I had a fika a couple of weeks ago with Folkteatern's CEO, Lotta Lekvall; we discussed it when putting together The Space's new programme focused on digital change.

It’s a question I’ve wrestled with myself when trying to explain the kind of work I do. Because that single word now stands in for a bewildering range of activities, roles, tools, and intentions.

And that’s a problem.

Because when a word means everything, it risks meaning nothing. And when a concept feels this elastic, it’s hard to:

• set strategy,
• allocate budget,
• or build shared understanding.

And these three areas have come up again and again as ongoing challenges that are affecting digital work.

Do job titles indicate a shift?

Some, more mature, organisations have shifted away from the catchall terminology of 'digital'.

Stuart's Head of Screen role at the Sydney Opera House, and Kati Price's Head of Experience title at the V&A give a very clear indication of the focus and priority of those particular 'digital' roles.

But in smaller and less digitally literate organisations broad 'digital' roles still commonly exist, and I imagine they will continue to do so for some time yet.

It might be more useful to try and shift the conversation toward greater specificity, not just saying 'digital', but specifically naming what we’re really doing and wanting to achieve.

A more useful frame: not one thing, but a landscape

I’ve been working on a way to plot a clearer map of the many (and very different) things that get lumped under the ‘digital’ umbrella.

It has been challenging to come up with something succinct yet representative of all the many areas of focus and responsibility that digital roles generally encompass.

I wondered if instead of asking “what is digital?”, it might be more helpful to ask:

“Where is this work focused and what is it enabling?”

That led me to a two-axis model:

• One axis runs from internal to external. This asks the question is this work aimed at the organisation’s inner workings, or its connection with audiences?
• The other runs from operational to expressive. I.e. is this work about enabling systems and structures, or delivering creative and cultural experiences?

To make this more tangible, I’ve plotted some real-world examples of digital activity on the matrix to show how they differ in function and focus:

What about governance and strategy?

Most of the types of activity I have plotted on the chart are tangible in nature, but I think this framing also works for strategic and governance-focused work.

In the updated matrix below I've added a grey area which I think would coincide with where this type of work would sit.

Here are a couple of examples of how projects or initiatives of this type would be mapped onto the framework.

Digital strategy: centred, or slightly internal + operational leaning

• It touches everything, systems, engagement, and expression, so it likely sits near the centre, with a slight lean toward the internal and enabling end.
  • Why? Because digital strategy typically exists to set direction, prioritise investment, and align organisational capability - it enables other work, even if it’s not expressive in itself.
• In more artistically-led organisations or creative roles, you could justify nudging it closer to expressive territory especially if it incorporates a digital vision for artistic outputs.

AI policy: internal + operational (bottom left quadrant)

• This is squarely in the internal/operational quadrant. It’s about governance, risk management, ethics, and alignment with organisational values.
• It’s not about the use of AI for creative output (which could lean more towards expressive), but the rules and frameworks for how AI is used; safely, responsibly, and transparently.
• In a more experimental context, for example if you were writing AI policy for creative co-authorship or curatorial augmentation, it could edge slightly toward expressive but it is still primarily internal.

Developing language

Even the matrix above, while useful, can feel abstract in conversation.

So I started using simpler terms to describe the function of digital work, which might help teams speak a common language about 'digital'.

In my experience working in-house, as a freelancer, and at an agency alongside lots of cultural organisations over the last 20 years, digital activity and conversations are typically trying to do one or a combination of the following three things: Enable, Express, Engage.

Enable / Engage / Express

These aren’t departments or silos, they’re modes (or types) of digital activity, and most organisations work across all three.

• Enable: Laying the groundwork. The infrastructure, systems, workflows, and internal tools that make everything else possible.
  • For example: CRM implementation, digitisation of collection assets, skills development, data architecture, rehearsal tech.
• Engage: Building relationships. How you connect with audiences, funders, and communities.
  • For example: websites, social media, audience analytics, digital fundraising, accessibility.
• Express: Creating meaning. Cultural and artistic outputs that are made possible, enhanced, or extended through digital.
  • For example: digital exhibitions, livestreamed performance, interactive archives, digital commissions, immersive art.

Thinking in these terms starts to give us a more practical language for describing what we are doing and why. Are we investing to enable, to engage, or to express? Are our digital ambitions aligned across these areas?

And these modes won’t exist in isolation. Very few examples are just one 'thing'. Here are four radar plots showing how different types of digital activity span across the Enable / Engage / Express dimensions:

• Digital commission leans heavily into Express, but also draws on Enable and Engage to reach audiences and run smoothly.
• Livestreamed performance strongly blends all three, technical infrastructure, audience interaction, and artistic output.
• CRM implementation is primarily Enable, with lighter touches of Engage.
• Accessible online exhibition spans all categories quite evenly, highlighting how accessibility is both enabling and expressive.

Framing digital in this way might help to build shared understanding, align teams, and avoid the trap of seeing digital as a specialist concern, rather than something that could and should support the whole organisation.

Explore and Evaluate

When talking about this framework with folks working on digital stuff in the sector two additional ideas were suggested.

One was that innovation and R&D-type activity could perhaps be considered to be a separate areas of activity, some have suggested calling this 'Explore'.

And another was that it’s always valuable to find ways to reflect on impact, we could call this feedback loop ‘Evaluate’.

I think that these two important ideas could relatively easily be incorporated as types of work within the original '3 E's' model.

What does this help you do?

Thinking about digital activity in this way can make things feel a lot clearer. It gives you a more specific, more shareable understanding of what a project is really aiming to do and, just as importantly, what success should actually look and feel like.

When I shared this framework with Emma Keith (outgoing Managing Director of Digital at the National Theatre), she made a point that really stuck with me: "it makes me think that defining the measures of success against each mode is also critical. For example, I can imagine there being Enable projects, which have Engage metrics set against them. Therefore, they’re destined for ‘failure’ from the outset because the wrong things are being expected from the project."

This model also helps organisations think beyond individual projects and start to see their digital work as part of a larger, interconnected programme.. For example if you realise you are only focused on Express type activities you might be overlooking internal skills, process, and systems (Enable), and promotion, audience reach and development, revenue, and community building (Engage).

Seeing all three areas (Enable, Engage, Express) as working together helps make those gaps visible, and gives you better tools for prioritising and rebalancing.

This framework complements, rather than replaces, digital maturity models

It’s worth being clear: the Enable / Engage / Express framework is not a maturity assessment. It doesn’t score performance or track progress over time. Instead, it sits alongside maturity models as a way of exploring the type or intent of digital activity.

If a maturity model helps you answer the question “how well are we doing?”, this framework is more about clarifying “what are we actually trying to do?”

That distinction matters. Without a clear understanding of project intent, it's easy for teams to set the wrong expectations, for example, by applying 'engagement' success measures to an 'enable' project, as Emma highlights above. This misalignment can lead to mismatched outcomes and avoidable disappointment.

So rather than replacing maturity assessments, this framework can help teams:

• Have more precise conversations about the nature of their digital work
• Align project expectations with intent
• Avoid mismatches between project type and performance measures

Used together, these approaches provide a more complete picture, one helps you understand your current capabilities while the other helps you define and describe the work you're doing and why.

This is a starting point, not a finished map

Framing digital work in terms of Enable, Engage, Express and plotting it across a matrix of organisational focus and function has helped me make more sense of the sprawl.

It’s given me and the folks I work with a clearer way to talk about digital activity, to see where the gaps are, and to spot where we might be overloading a single role or project with too many expectations.

You can discover more about how I could help your organisation get the most out of this new framework.

But this isn’t a fixed or final version of the model. It’s a starting point and one that I expect to keep evolving.

Every organisation is different. And every digital project has its own blend of ambition, context, and constraints. So I’d love to hear how this sounds to you:

• Does this tally with your experience?
• What doesn’t quite fit?
• What feels useful or still unclear?

If you’ve got thoughts, questions, or examples from your own work that might sharpen or challenge this model, I’d really like to hear them. Drop me a message (ash@ashmann.co), or leave a comment. I’m always up for a conversation.