This document provides background information on a PhD workshop presentation about conceptualizing the experience of social media using tourists. It discusses two frames: the "selfie gaze" and "social media pilgrimage". The selfie gaze is a mental frame governing a traveler's use of social media on their journey and the behaviors it engenders. A social media pilgrimage describes how social media use influences travel behaviors. Key concepts discussed include the tourist gaze, connectivity, surveillance, micro-celebrity, and how travelers engage in online identity performance and manage audiences. The document suggests these frames could provide insights into how social media usage affects the emotional and experiential aspects of travel.

1. ENTER 2016 PhD Workshop Slide Number 1
The 'selfie gaze' and ‘social media pilgrimage’:
Two frames for conceptualising the
experience of social media using tourists
Michelangelo Magasic
Curtin University, Australia
m.magasic@postgrad.curtin.edu.au

2. Background 1: Previous Study
• MA research looked at how keeping a blog during a 3 month
multicountry trip affected my travel experience.
- Internet access,
- Device maintenance
- Blog success
- Imagined audience
• Magasic, M (2014). Travel blogging. First Monday.

3. Background 2: Current PhD Study
What: Investigation of social media usage along emotional and
experiential lines
How: Autoethnography: Critical reflection on my own experience
Performative thesis: “A travelogue of device usage”
When: April 2015 – April 2018
Why: A better understanding of how internet devices affect the
practice of travel

4. Background 3: ‘Performative’ tourism
“…tourism is increasingly being imagined and ‘‘told’’ besides being
‘‘physically experienced.’” (Munar 2013)
“Younger generations no longer travel to ‘discover’ themselves, but to
say something about themselves to their social peers. It may even be
that these travellers now think about an experience in terms of how
they will share it with others. ”
(Intercontinental Hotels Group 2013)

5. Background 4: Selfies
(BBC, November 13 2013)
(Chainsmokers [YouTube], January 29 2014)
(Mirror UK, October 8 2014)

6. (Daily Mail, June 1 2014)

7. (Mashable, September 22 2015); (Ravishly, September 24, 2015 [image])

8. (CNN, June 12 2015)

9. (Travgear, December 11 2014)

10. (Fox5 San Diego, June 26 2015)

11. “…part of the reason that people want to take crazy photos on clifftops, whether a
selfie or a photo taken by someone else, is that tourist offices market them.”
(Walker Rettberg 2015)
(Jilltxt Sep 23 2015)

12. Selfie Gaze Social Media Pilgrimage
Form A mental frame governing the
traveller’s use of social media
Specific set of behaviours
engendered by the “Selfie Gaze”
Implications for
travel
Emotional
(mental -- thoughts/feelings)
Experiential
(physical – what travellers visit/do)
Key concepts “Tourist gaze”
Connectedness
“The Panopticon”
“The tourist as ‘seeker’”
“Performance of self”
Privileged themes Surveillance
(Micro) Celebrity
Mass appeal
Connectivity
Activity
Liquidity

13. What is the Selfie Gaze?
A conceptual frame for describing how travel is different now that it
has an audience.

14. The Tourist Gaze
• Urry - Tourist gaze (1992, 2002 and 2011 [with Larsen])
• “There are no naïve tourists who go to a place without any conception
whatsoever about what will be found there…”
(Bruner 2005)

15. Connectedness
• “we can no longer say that being together is the opposite of being
apart, or that being away necessarily means that one is absent”
(Molz & Paris 2015, p. 180).
• “….the liminal experience is transformed into a continuing
engagement with established relationships and an ongoing
connection to people back home”
(White & White 2007, p. 100)

16. Digitalised Tourist Gaze (1/2)
• Urry and Larsen (2011) note that there are more entities that
influence the gaze .
• The tourist gaze is ‘activated’ (Kang & Gretzel, 2012; Pera, 2014)
• New tourist identity – commentator of services (Munar 2013)

17. Digital tourist gaze 2/2
• “Tourists are constantly caught in the dilemma of who to satisfy
during the selection process.” (Lo & McKercher 2015)
• “Rather than fetishizing the extraordinary at the tourist destination,
tourists seek to capture the extraordinary within themselves.”
(Dinhopl & Gretzel, 2016)

18. The Panopticon (Focault, 1975)
(New York Times , July 18 2013)

19. Selfie Gaze –
Privileged themes
Characteristics
Surveillance Online platforms collapse the boundaries between public
and private. The user negotiates between exposure and
privacy costs. (Lovink 2011; Papacharissi, 2012).
(Micro) Celebrity Social media users engage in self presentation and identity
management. Counters for ‘friends’, ‘followers’, ‘likes’ and
‘shares’ provide a “quantifiable metric for social success.”
(Marwick & boyd, 2011b, p.127).
Mass appeal Tourists adopt an “omnivorous” voice (Day Good, 2013)
that appeals to a wide audience. They are aware of the
connectivity of people and spaces with global trends
providing avenues for status accrual, and tagging a means
of collective communication.

20. What is Social Media Pilgrimage?
A way of describing how social media use influences travel behaviour.

21. Tourism social media use as a journey
• The use of tourism social media as “a virtual, emotional, and
imaginative mode of travel, preceding as well as running parallel with
the actual physical journey” (Munar & Gyimothy 2013, p. 2).

22. The tourist as “seeker”
• Cohen’s (1979) typology of tourist experience: The “Existential” frame
posits the tourist as a “seeker” who is “fully committed to finding an
‘elective’ spiritual centre.” (189-191).
• In this case, the traveller’s spiritual centre is social media success

23. What does this success look like?
(Wordpress, 2013)
(???)
(Wired, October 5 2012)

24. The result?
• The enactment of physical behaviours necessary to support the
online journey
Mundane: Charging devices, searching for and using the internet,
Complex: Routines of performance

25. Social Media
Pilgrimage-
Privileged themes
Characteristic
Connectivity Tourists frequently connect to the Internet There is a loss
of liminality (White & White, 2007) as everyday and tourist
routines mix.
Activity Successful social media users are active. The more one
does, the more one has to tell.
Liquidity Social media feedback exerts a significant influence upon
the journeyer (Magasic, 2014). Decisions may be made
with little or no planning as audience feedback is given in
real time.

26. Why study the experience of social media
using tourists?
• A “managerial bias” in tourism research (Munar, 2013)
• “…it is only by incorporating qualitative analyses of travel bloggers’
experiences that destination marketers can extrapolate, comprehend, and
ultimately incorporate into marketing strategies the meanings tourists
assign to their tourism experiences.” (Banyai & Havitz 2013)

27. Theme Speculative implications for the
analysis of tourists’ UGC
Surveillance Posting is not value neutral.
Micro Celebrity Posting reflects the “Performance of Self” (Goffman 1959)
Mass Appeal The traveller is implicitly aware of news and trends through their
participation in social networks (savvy not naïve).
Connectivity Travel itineraries of social media users are reflective of connection
centred behaviour (and the geography of connection/disconnection).
Activity Other Oriented Value (Hollbrook 1999)
Liquidity Social media content is dialogical. It reflects interactions with other

28. Thank you. Suggestions appreciated.

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