{"title":"“Gazing” and “performing”: Travel photography and online self-presentation","authors":"Kaylan C. Schwarz","doi":"10.1177/1468797620985789","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article illustrates the self-presentations young people foreground when they visually communicate international volunteer experiences to social media audiences. Through a “categorical-content” analysis of repeated semi-structured interviews and photographic content posted to Facebook, and with theoretical support from Urry’s “tourist gaze” and Goffman’s “presentation of self,” I describe three impressions “given” and “given off” within participants’ profiles. The findings reveal some familiar touristic scenes (necessitating tribute to the well-established “family” and “romantic” gazes) and also inspire a new gazing form (incorporating “gutsy” bodily experiences). However, these holiday-like portrayals were selectively disclosed and complicated by the sentiments participants expressed during face-to-face interviews. As different self-presentations were idealized in different settings, this article helps to elucidate the situational role of the audience and offers unique analytical insights that may not have emerged had I utilized one method in isolation. Its contribution is located within its intersections: blending gazing and performing frameworks, employing verbal and visual approaches, leading to etic and emic understandings.","PeriodicalId":47199,"journal":{"name":"Tourist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3000,"publicationDate":"2021-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1468797620985789","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Tourist Studies","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468797620985789","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
This article illustrates the self-presentations young people foreground when they visually communicate international volunteer experiences to social media audiences. Through a “categorical-content” analysis of repeated semi-structured interviews and photographic content posted to Facebook, and with theoretical support from Urry’s “tourist gaze” and Goffman’s “presentation of self,” I describe three impressions “given” and “given off” within participants’ profiles. The findings reveal some familiar touristic scenes (necessitating tribute to the well-established “family” and “romantic” gazes) and also inspire a new gazing form (incorporating “gutsy” bodily experiences). However, these holiday-like portrayals were selectively disclosed and complicated by the sentiments participants expressed during face-to-face interviews. As different self-presentations were idealized in different settings, this article helps to elucidate the situational role of the audience and offers unique analytical insights that may not have emerged had I utilized one method in isolation. Its contribution is located within its intersections: blending gazing and performing frameworks, employing verbal and visual approaches, leading to etic and emic understandings.
期刊介绍:
Tourist Studies is a multi-disciplinary journal providing a platform for the development of critical perspectives on the nature of tourism as a social phenomenon through a qualitative lens. Theoretical and multi-disciplinary. Tourist Studies provides a critical social science approach to the study of the tourist and the structures which influence tourist behaviour and the production and reproduction of tourism. The journal examines the relationship between tourism and related fields of social inquiry. Tourism and tourist styles consumption are not only emblematic of many features of contemporary social change, such as mobility, restlessness, the search for authenticity and escape, but they are increasingly central to economic restructuring, globalization, the sociology of consumption and the aestheticization of everyday life. Tourist Studies analyzes these features of tourism from a multi-disciplinary perspective and seeks to evaluate, compare and integrate approaches to tourism from sociology, socio-psychology, leisure studies, cultural studies, geography and anthropology. Global Perspective. Tourist Studies takes a global perspective of tourism, widening and challenging the established views of tourism presented in current periodical literature. Tourist Studies includes: Theoretical analysis with a firm grounding in contemporary problems and issues in tourism studies, qualitative analyses of tourism and the tourist experience, reviews linking theory and policy, interviews with scholars at the forefront of their fields, review essays on particular fields or issues in the study of tourism, review of key texts, publications and visual media relating to tourism studies, and notes on conferences and other events of topical interest to the field of tourism studies.