Collection of notes and quotes from relevant readings

Blackshaw, P. and Nazzaro, M. (2006) Consumer-generated Media (CGM) 101: Word of Mouth in the age of the web-fortified consumer. New York: Neilsen Buzz Metris

• ‘media impressions created by consumers, typically informed by relevant experience, and archived or shared online for easy access by other impressionable consumers’
• Consumer-generated content supported through social media is “a mixture of fact and opinion, impression and sentiment, founded and unfounded tidbits, experiences, and even rumour” (4)

Everett, S. (2008) ‘Beyond the visual gaze? The pursuit of an embodied experience through food tourism’ Tourist Studies [online] 8 (3), 337-358. available from <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1468797608100594> [15th April 2020]

• Hall and Sharples’ (2003: 10) definition as the ‘visitation to primary and secondary food producers, food festivals, restaurants and specific locations … it is the desire to experience a particular type of food or the produce of a specific region …’. My work relates to tourists who make a conscious effort to visit specific food/drink tourism sites
• After all, ‘the notion that food and drink might serve as a central organizing theme for anyone studying the world of humankind seems to have eluded virtually all social scientists; but, after a bit of reflection, it does make abundant good sense’ (Zelinsky, 1985: 51).
• ‘food is increasingly regarded as a multidimensional, everyday artefact which encompasses the very identity of a place or individual’ (340)

Garrod, B. (2009) Understanding the relationship between tourism destination imagery and tourist photography

Garrod uses an empirical test to see if Urry’s (1990) theory that the practise of photography as a tourist and role photographs play in tourism marketing are indeed two linked ideas that ‘reflect and inform destination images’ (346). Garrod is trying to test if these two are linked and ends up with mixed results. Nonetheless, this is useful in developed an understanding into how Instagram images are a part of tourism destination imagery.

Haldrup and Larsen (2010) Tourism, performance and the everyday: Consuming the orient

‘Such representational accounts have been successful in analysing photography as texts and scripts, but they have been blind to issues of technology and hybridized performances, which also means that they have neglected much of the significance of digital photography’ (123).

Lin, Y. and Huang, J. (2015) ‘Internet blogs as a tourism marketing medium: A case study’ Journal of Business Research [online] 52(10-11), 1201-1205. available from <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014829630600097X> [3 April 2020]

• In this journal article, Lin and Huang look at the 2003 Yahoo Anniversary Website ‘I left my heart in Aegean Sea’. The website was made an engineer named Justin who had just returned from the Aegean Sea and uploaded 124 photos to the website to share with his friends. The website became a worldwide success and encouraged more people to visit the place. Lin and Huang analysis what exactly makes this site so appealing, which can help develop my understanding on why photos are effective tools for encouraging tourists to visit a location.
• ‘As standards of living improve, people are placing an increasing emphasis on leisure. People are increasingly actively seeking ways to relax and eliminate stress. Thus travel has become a popular leisure activity. Numerous factors influence the destination choice, including advertising campaigns by destination countries, travel agency promotions, airline ticket discounting, movies or TV programs, word of mouth, personal preferences, and so on’
• ‘The website was highly effective in place marketing but used a different approach to those generally prescribed by marketing theory. First, the website was not built by a government agency or tourism association’

Lo, I S., McKercher, B. (2015) ‘Ideal image in process: Online tourist photography and impression management’ in Annals of Tourism Research 52, 104-116 available from <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738315000419> [3 April 2020]

• ‘It has also transformed tourism, for social media now play a vital role in the construction of the tourist gaze, destination image, and travel decisions’ (Lin and Huang, 2005, Schmallegger and Carson, 2008, White, 2010).
• ‘It acts as a form of aide-memoire and a communication tool, whereby tourists can capture the significant, what is worth to remember (Chalfen, 1981) and seize the frozen evidence of “I have been” (Sontag, 1977).’
• ‘Interestingly, as well, travel photographs simultaneously represent and deny reality. Sontag (1977) suggests that to photograph is to refuse what is given. Instead of accepting the direct experience of a scene, an event, or an object, photography allows one to only focus on what one wishes to see and experience through framing. This issue is especially prescient in tourism, for Pocock (2009) finds that photography allows the tourist to see and experience places in a new way that is only made possible through the camera.
• ‘It also allows the photographer to frame reality in an idealized manner, and especially since the advent of digital photography and photoshopping software, to manipulate the image to create an ideal image of what could have been.’
• Urry’s (2002) concept of the tourist gaze, and that is fundamentally what sets it apart from other forms of photography. The tourist gaze sees tourism experiences as an escape from the mundane and ordinariness of everyday life and the search for the extraordinary that contrasts from what one can see in everyday experience’

Scarles, C. (2009) ‘Becoming Tourist: Renegotiating the Visual in the Tourist Experience’ in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27, 465-488

• As Phelan (1997) suggests, photographs create `blind images’ as selectivity in their production creates presences and absences that divert attention from less desirable place element
• Angela, photograph only desirable or aesthetically pleasing experiences that reinforce desired experience and place narratives: “if something is not pretty, it’s not worthy of being photographed.
• ‘tourists’ photography is inspired by not only that which is seen, but touched, tasted, heard, and smelt’ (Scarles 2009)
• ‘tourists re enliven place as they are sucked into the body of the image and ignite that which photographs cannot show and corporeal vision cannot see’

Schmallegger, D. and Carson, D. (2008) ‘Blogs in tourism: Changing approaches to information exchange’ in Journal of Vacation Marketing  14(2), 99-110 London: Sage

• While this article is heavily based in Marketing and Tourism, it does examine how travel blogs are affecting tourism marketing. It looks at these blogs through a business lens. While Brunch Lovers Lyon isn’t necessarily a travel blog, it probably does generate some revenue, and it almost is like a visual blog. The insights in this article might be useful to develop an analysis.
• ‘One of the major reasons for this phenomenon is certainly the higher perceived credibility of consumer opinions as compared to traditional tourist information sources’ (100)
• ‘It has been acknowledged from both academics and practitioners that online reviews and recommendations are becoming increasingly popular as a new digital form of word of mouth’ (100-101)
• ‘The forms and appearances of blogs in tourism today are manifold.  In its broadest definition, blogs provide commentary and personal thoughts on a particular subject (for example a specific trip or destination), are frequently updated and displayed in reverse-chronological order)’ (101)

Urry, J. and Larsen, J. (2011) The Tourist Gaze 3.0 London: SAGE

• ‘The concept of the gaze highlights that looking is a learned ability and that the pure and innocent eye is a myth’ (1)
• ‘People gaze upon the world through a particular filter of ideas, skills, desires and expectations, framed by social class, gender, nationality, age and education’ (2)
• ‘The “tourist gaze” is not a matter of individual psychology but of socially patterned and learnt ways of seeing’ (2)
• “Places are chosen to be gazed upon because there is anticipation, especially through daydreaming and fantasy, of intense pleasures, either on a different scale or involving different senses from those customarily encountered. Such anticipation is constructed and sustained through a variety of non-tourist technologies, such as film, TV, literature, magazines, CDs, DVDs and videos, constructing and reinforcing the gaze.” (John Urry 2011: 4)
• There are different baselines in relation to understanding tourism 1) it’s a leisure activity, 2) the movement of people and length of their story, 3) journey and stay are outside of normal residency and work, 4) the tourist places are not directly connected with work, 5) a large portion of the population engage in their practises, 6) places are chosen based on anticipation created and sustained by non-tourist technologies, 7) the gaze is directed at landscape and townscape – which is then photographed to be ‘reproduced, recaptured and redistributed overtime and across space’, 8) gaze is constructed by signs, 9) tourist professionals produce fresh and new content
• ‘the tourist’s sensuality and aesthetic sense are as restricted as they are in their home country’ (8)
• ‘Gazing is not merely seeing, but involves cognitive work of interpreting, evaluating, drawing comparisons and making mental connections between signs and their referents, and capturing signs photographically’ (17)
• Discourse’s include education, health, group solidarity, pleasure and play, heritage and memory and nation (19)
• Different gazes: romantic, collective, spectator, reverential, anthropological, environmental, mediated and family (19-20)
• Osborne describes: ‘the ultimate inseparability of the medium [of photography] from tourism’s general culture and economy and from the varieties of modern culture of which they are constitutive’ (2000: 70).
• We need to think of photographs as corporeal, travelling, ageing and affective, rather than as bodiless, timeless, fixed and passive. (129)
• ‘Many personal photographic images are now destined to live virtual, digital lives without material substance, in cameras, computers and on the internet’ (130)
• ‘we never look just at one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves’ (Berger)

Bibliography for all work:

• Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
• Blackshaw, P. and Nazzaro, M. (2006) Consumer-generated Media (CGM) 101: Word of Mouth in the age of the web-fortified consumer. New York: Neilsen Buzz Metris
• BrunchLoversLyon (2019) Instagram page. 25 November. available from <https://www.instagram.com/p/B5SMG6gobqC/> [10 April 2020]Corvo, P. and Matacena, R., 2018. Slow food in slow tourism. In: M. Clancy, ed., Slow tourism, food and cities: pace and the search for the ‘good life’. New York: Routledge, p.97.
• Dann, G. (2002) The Tourist as A Metaphor of The Social World. Wallingford. UK: CABI Pub.
• Everett, S. (2008) ‘Beyond the visual gaze? The pursuit of an embodied experience through food tourism’ Tourist Studies [online]8 (3), 337-358. available from <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1468797608100594> [15^th April 2020]
• Featherstone, M. (1991) Consumer Culture And Postmodernism. London: Sage
• Handszuh, H. (2018) Global Code of Ethics for Tourism [translation: Henryk Handszuh]. Folia Turistica, 49, 333-345.
• Kahlioui, J., 2017. ENQUÊTE: Les Tacos, Nouveaux Rois Du Fast-Food Français. [online] Clique.tv. available at: <https://www.clique.tv/les-tacos-histoire-dun-succes-junk-food-a-la-francaise/> [Accessed 16 April 2020]. 
• Lo, I S. and McKercher, B. (2015) ‘Ideal image in process: Online tourist photography and impression management’ Annals of Tourism Research [online] 52, 104-116. available from <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738315000419> [3 April 2020]
• Schmallegger, D. and Carson, D. (2008) ‘Blogs in tourism: Changing approaches to information exchange’ Journal of Vacation Marketing [online] 14(2), 99-110. available from <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1356766707087519> [3 April 2020]
• Tacos Origins (2020) Directed by B. Gens. Actes Vulgaires.
• Urry, J. and Larsen, J. (2011) The Tourist Gaze 3.0. Los Angeles: SAGE.