Digital representation of youth' agency in culture: a database of projects

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Agency is a multidisciplinary concept denoting individual ability to initiate and carry out actions that transform one's own life and social environment (Bandura, 2001;Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). Traditionally, in psychology, agency is viewed as an internal characteristic -a constellation of motives, attitudes, and cognitive schemas that drive human action (Bandura, 2001). Studies of this sort focus on the desire to be active, the aspiration for autonomy, self-esteem, while often overlooking real, objective activity that exerts influence on social structures (Cavazzoni et al., 2022;Sorokin, Redko, 2024). "Strong" forms of agency, when individuals or groups directly create or transform social structures remain less studied -both within and beyond psychological literature (Hoggett, 2001;de Haan, Rotmans, 2018). Yet it is precisely these forms of agency that become critical in times of increasing social tensions and institutional turbulence making individual initiative necessary for sustaining collective well-being. The forms of such agentic behavior span from corporate, technological or social entrepreneurship and volunteering to various project activities, including those performed by youth.Digital technologies have created entirely new space for the formation and manifestation of agency (Sorokin, 2025). Social networks, platforms and online communities offer new opportunities for self-expression that might have a transformative impact on social reality (Frade, 2025;Siddiq et al., 2024). The concept of "hybrid agency" (Sorokin, 2025) reflects individuals' potential to combine personal initiative with the capabilities of digital platforms. For instance, hosting a podcast and building a follower community in the digital sphere using Artificial Intelligence tools (like chat-bots) enables individual self-expression and also facilitates new social connections and possible joint activities .In this context, the sphere of culture is of particular importance. Unlike other domains of agency (e.g., technological entrepreneurship or political activism), culture is more accessible to young people, requiring neither substantial initial financial investments nor high risk (Sorokin, Afanasyeva et al., 2025). Examples of youth projects in culture manifesting agency include preserving cultural heritage, supporting communities and creating new products, services, markets and landscapes (see Beel et. al., 2017;Wulff, 2022). Importantly, "external effects" of projects on the social environment (mentioned above) and "processual dimension" of agency (stable system of interrelations, regular events) should be distinguished (Lund, Vestøl, 2020).Digital traces, including publications, comments, photos, and videos disseminated through media, including social networks, represent an important yet understudied source of data that can be used to document structural aspects of human agency -in particular, in such legitimate and easily accessible field as culture (Frade, 2025;Siddiq et al., 2024).Despite the growing scholarly interest in youth' agency (Cavazzoni et al., 2022), including in the field of culture, still lacking is a publicly available database documenting the digital representation of youth' cultural projects at the national level, including its structural forms and effects. This Data Report presents a database of youth-led cultural projects, incorporating 94 initiatives across Russia. The dataset contains specially structured information on these projects.Examples include restoring and preserving cultural heritage, shaping and supporting cultural identities, and transforming public spaces -in line with existing literature on single cases representing other locations (for instance, for Albania -see Menkshi et al., 2021).In contrast to other studies on youth agency, including cultural projects, this database was constructed using a novel methodological approach based on analysing digital traces of youth-led cultural projects. This dataset may be of particular interest to scholars of cultural and social psychology, as well as those studying transformations in the post-Soviet space.Data collection period, sources and search strategy. The dataset was collected between January 2025 and June 2025 in the major digital platforms for representation and support of youth' initiatives in Russia, including social media VKontakte, messenger Telegram, social media Instagram and specialized websites aimed at discussing and supporting youth projects in culture.The data collection process was conducted in two stages.In the first stage, relying on existing experience in research on human agency representation in the digital environment in Russia (Sorokin et. al., 2025, Сорокин и др. 2025a), using both automatic and manual tools we screened more than 50 projects relating to culture, identified in major publics in social media VKontakte. We searched for the cultural projects using keywords: "culture", "fashion and style", "craft", "entertainment", "cultural centre", "artist", "theatre", "entrepreneur", "gallery", "public association", "creative spaces", "street art", "art residencies", "art clusters" etc.We revealed different types of cultural projects, which were grouped into three broad categories: 1) other-oriented cultural entrepreneurship (projects aimed at providing opportunities for others to perform novel cultural practices and produce cultural content), 2) self-oriented cultural entrepreneurship (producing self-authored creative products or services changing cultural landscape), and 3) cultural volunteering (supporting cultural initiatives). Each category demonstrates a different pattern of agency representation, which resulted in partially different inclusion criteria (according to each parameter, selected based on previous research) (Сорокин и др., 2025b).The second stage consisted of sample formation (using the same mentioned above keywords) and verification using various sources, including VKontakte, Telegram and Instagram.Only projects with systematic representation of their activities over the past 9 months (in terms of the digital traces they generate) were included. Every potentially relevant project that we identified was searched for additional digital representation in other sources of digital data using the projects' name as a keyword (e.g. Telegram, Instagram and specialized web-sites).Inclusion Criteria. Projects were included in the database according to the following criteria: -For other-oriented cultural entrepreneurship: minimum 2,000 subscribers, average of at least 15 likes per post, and at least 3 comments per post; -For self-oriented cultural entrepreneurship: minimum 600 subscribers, at least 8 likes per post; -For cultural volunteering: minimum 900 subscribers, average of at least 10 likes per post, and at least 2 comments per post.3. Explicit identification of the project leader, core team members, partners, or affiliated initiatives in public digital sources.4. Affiliation with cultural themes, including contemporary art, local cultural heritage, etc.5. Project leader aged 18 to 35 at the time of data collection.6. Minimum project duration of three years, verified through consistent digital content publication and activity traceable across at least 36 months.Projects were not considered if they were purely commercial with no explicit declaration of social orientation or mission, or if they were directly affiliated with and fully controlled (as can be visible from their digital traces) by the state or corporate entities.These criteria are justified by the authors' five years long (since 2021) experience in several large-scale empirical research projects (both applied and fundamental) focusing on agency representation and manifestation in the digital field. During these projects more than 3000 projects were analyzed while authors worked closely with entrepreneurs, volunteers and project-leaders. This experience is reflected in a number of peer-reviewed art

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