Communication in Tourism: Information Technologies, the Human User, Visual Culture and the Location

Abstract

This chapter intends to reflect upon and discuss the discursive materiality and its impact on the (de)construction of the identity of destinations – location, people and cultural artefacts as represented in multimodal texts (verbal and non-verbal language in interplay) among the wide array of communicative events in tourism. The analysis of meaning production and reception in this dialogic encounter is believed to benefit from a multidisciplinary analysis of some discursive practices across domains in tourism. They comprise some instances (i) of speakers’ interaction in local accommodation facilities mediated by digital media, for example booking.com. Guesthouse – Message: Guest – SMS, cross-culturally, (ii) together with cultural traits of multimodal kind (Kress G, Van Leeuwen T, Multimodal discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication. Routledge, London, 2001) in destinations. It also aims to promote some necessary reflection on the nature of representations and the impact of multimodal communication in users’ interaction evidenced in communicative practices in the realm of immersive tourism, among other alternative types. In the scope of the approach foreshadowed in the title, this chapter also draws on online visitors’ comments to one of the cafés displayed on TripAdvisor’s webpages about a destination (pages 1 to 10; entries: March to September 2019, Portuguese version), all of which of cross-cultural kind. It is argued that committed citizenship is fostered by the necessary dialogue in urban areas between visitors and locals/residents about and with the location, facilitated by information technologies, the human user, and visual culture. As such, the dialogue should involve multidisciplinary research fields and practitioners to foster effective communication among participants: visitors – residents and designers of interactive media. These act upon the image of a location and are also impacted by the image created. Given the wide scope of the study, mostly unidirectional communicative events are object of analysis as the possible but diverse patterns of hosts’ reactions should be collected and examined in further studies.