Engaging with popular media through tourism: A brief introduction

Introduction

As we move towards the end of the second decade of this century, we are witnessing massive changes in the ways that society uses travel and tourism to engage with popular media in imaginative and active ways. Not only do tourists visit the places where the stories are set, but they are also creating their own stories before, during and after their journeys. This phenomenon is not the same across all cultures, yet at the same time is strangely similar. Ranging from cultural and societal perspectives to exploring the ways in which tourists (and hosts) engage with different popular media, this Special Issue presents qualitative research papers that consider these similarities and differences within the critical tourism studies field.

We are pleased and honoured to present a variety of research studies addressing the ways in which popular media can be engaged through tourism. From the streets of New York and the American wilderness to the passenger seats of an Australian airline, onto the serene Grand View Garden in Beijing and a romantic Bollywood performance in the Swiss Alps, this Special Issue contains six highly diverse papers exploring the massive changes in the ways that society uses travel and tourism to connect with popular media. The media featured are also highly diverse and range from more traditional mediums, such as film, television series and advertising, to newer and more niche channels, such as social media, punk music and anime. Together, the cases show that, in an ever more globalised and digitised world, destination stakeholders are participating in this social phenomenon in increasingly dynamic ways. While variation is encountered across cultures, these touristic activities also display thematic threads that bind them. We aim for this Special Issue to present qualitative research papers that contemplate and reflect on these similarities and differences, ranging from cultural and societal perspectives to exploring the ways in which tourists and hosts engage with the popular media of the day.

The genesis of this Special Issue lies in a special track on Film, Pop Culture and Tourism held at the Travel and Tourism Research Association’s Asia-Pacific Chapter conference. Interested presenters from the conference were provided with a ‘critical reader’ familiar with the field of critical tourism studies and qualitative research to provide initial feedback and advice in relation to future publication. Such a mentoring arrangement has been used by us previously and we find it supports the authors in ways that strengthen their papers that more traditional blind-reviewing cannot. We thank and acknowledge the support of our critical readers Dallen Timothy, Phillip Long, Whitney Knollenberg and Tom Mordue who generously lent significant time and expertise to this process. We have enjoyed working with the group of researchers as they developed their presentations for publication, and while not all are published in this Special Issue, every one of them benefited from the guidance, finding the experience to be highly valuable. Presenters’ papers then underwent the customary anonymous reviewing process alongside other submissions, resulting in a broad-ranging and high quality set of contributions. Another significant element of this Special Issue is the review of a book on the concept of contents tourism, which is directly relevant to our theme of Engaging with Popular Media through Tourism.

The contributions

Our contributors have adopted a range of lenses from which to view the ways that society uses travel and tourism to engage with popular media in imaginative and active ways. First, demonstrating the substantial changes in the ways that society uses travel and tourism to engage with popular media, Leanne White analyses images of Australia and the phenomenon of ‘commercial nationalism’ in Qantas television advertising broadcast between 1987 and 2017. Her close textual and semiotic analysis of the advertisements shows how the significant airline and tourism company has used nationalism for the benefit of their business.

Xiaoyu Zhang and Chris Ryan investigate visitors’ and local residents’ perceptions of a Chinese film site. Identifying a gap in the literature whereby existing studies concentrate mainly on Western film sites, their study focuses on a Chinese film site in Beijing, the Grand View Garden. This is an interesting case as unlike other such gardens in China, often built for imperial or private purposes, this site was constructed in 1984 for the making of the TV series, A Dream of Red Mansions, based on the novel of the same name. A comparative view of tourists’ and local residents’ perceptions about the site’s services, facilities, interpretation and authenticity are presented, as well as their motives for using such attractions. Without revealing too much about their findings, the study provides implications for residents’ attitudes towards tourists, the role residents play in creating a sense of place that is valued by tourists, as well as the importance attached to the preservation of the Garden’s heritage and culture.

Szilvia Gyimóthy’s study also possesses practical implications for place management, in this instance for new tourism practices in Switzerland that emerge in the wake of Bollywood films. She explores Bollywood-induced destination transformations in the Swiss Alps and assesses the consequences of the oriental tourist gaze on European space. A brief cultural history of Bollywood-in-the-Alps sets the scene to examine the coexistence of European- and Bollywood-produced place-imaginaries in shaping the texture of an Alpine destination.

Taking ‘a walk on the wild side’, Rebecca Johinke explores a more niche popular media via punk music walking tours in New York City, telling the story of a cultural community with a special tie to the Lower East Side. She simultaneously explores the concept of fandom, and in this case, how fans contribute to a history of music culture and to the practice of music tourism when documenting their walking tour experience. Findings from her study relate to the concepts of intra- and inter-personal authenticity of the practice of walking tours as ‘psychogeographic’, connecting fans with place.

Stepping into ever more contemporary popular media territory, Theodora Weatherby and Elizabeth Vidon explore the role of social media in female wilderness empowerment. They explain that while American wilderness has historically been conceived as a profoundly masculine landscape, tourism developments in wilderness, paired with feminine discourse on social media platforms, challenges the notion of the wilderness as gendered. Their study also highlights the more modern ways that tourists and travellers use social media to engage with landscapes and how this engagement can deconstruct powerful stereotypes through garnering support and social power.

The final paper by Marion McCutcheon is a book review of Contents Tourism in Japan: Pilgrimages to ‘Sacred Sites’ of Popular Culture, published in 2017 and authored by Akiko Sugawa, Kyungjae Jang, Philip Seaton and Takayoshi Yamamura. The review explains that the book presents and understands contents tourism as a long-standing phenomenon with roots in religious pilgrimage, and that extends beyond anime tourism in a Japanese context, to the Internet, digital technology and social media, which have become central to Japanese popular culture fandom. The review offers a critical summary of the book and its analytical approach and decides that the book contains great texture and rich analysis by drawing on a wide range of sources and illustrating contents tourism in Japan using research, illustrative photographs, people and places.

Conclusion

The studies in this Special Issue explore a highly diverse range of topics, ranging from more practical demonstrations of destination choice, contents tourism, placemaking and fandom to more amorphous concepts such as mediatised mobility, nationalism, gendered narratives and inter- and intra-personal authenticity, and illustrate one or several ways in which popular media can be engaged through tourism. Together, these cases show that we are witnessing massive changes in the ways that society uses travel and tourism to engage with popular media in imaginative and active ways.

Collectively, the research studies have implications for the ways in which tourism and the media is studied. The research methodologies engaged include textural, textual, shot combination and discourse analyses, demonstrating a range of methodological approaches to studying tourism and the media. This Special Issue as a whole hence offers methodological considerations on capturing the nuances of the phenomena under study.