Cloud Communities and Travel Diaries. Virtual Representations of Tourist Areas

Abstract

Collective construction of descriptions can radically change the image of an area. This uncontrollable process is destined to become one of the main priority research areas also in tourism studies. The spread of Web sites in which telling stories and descriptions of territories has become a significant element in the network society, and the growing use of social networks and cloud communities, often in planning tourism, contributes to social description of touristic landscapes and influence the collective imaginary. In social space, territories are the result of the superposition of different layers, from the real one to the virtual, bound to a constant exchange of information. This phenomenon that could guide tourist attraction, begins to affect the choices of local institutions and residents.The aim of the paper is to give an interpretation on the construction of collective representation, which takes place, after the journey, through the on-line publication of a diary. The research is divided into two parts. In the first, we explain some theoretical aspects related to the representation of the travel, the sharing of information in virtual form and the construction of an imaginary touristic. Subsequently, are taken into account the results obtained in previous studies related to the analysis of the narratives of tourism experiences, shared within virtual spaces freely accessible on the net. These results will be used to develop a model of interpretation on the virtual representation of tourist areas.

Keywords

• Social Space
• Rappresentazioni Virtuali
• Diari di Viaggio
• Text Mining