Tourism social media [electronic resource] : transformations in identity, community and culture / edited by Ana María Munar, Szilvia Gyimóthy, Liping Cai.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Tourism social media : a new research agenda / Ana María Munar, Szilvia Gyimóthy, Liping Cai -- Tourism social media as a fire object / Richard Ek -- Paradoxical digital worlds / Ana María Munar -- Symbolic convergence and tourism social media / Szilvia Gyimóthy -- Social media sites in destination image formation / Raslinda Mohd Ghazali, Liping Cai -- Sustainability and tourism social media / Adriana Budeanu -- Inspiring design : social media from the beach / Mads Bødker, David Browning -- The virtual Fan(G) community : social media and pop culture tourism / Maria Lexhagen, Mia Larson, Christine Lundberg -- Digital social construction of a tourist site : Ground Zero / Can-Seng Ooi, Ana María Munar -- Tourism social media and crisis communication : an erupting trend / Kristian Anders Hvass -- Web 2.0 innovations in events : human resource management issues / Pamm Kellett, Anne-Marie Hede -- Identity and social media in an art festival / Fabrizio Montanari, Annachiara Scapolan, Elena Codeluppi -- Tourism and media studies 3.0 / Toby Miller -- Critical digital tourism studies / Ana María Munar, Szilvia Gyimóthy.

This volume addresses the transformative power of tourism social media and offers novel theoretical and methodological approaches to its academic investigation. Acknowledging the collective value creation mechanisms of new media, the authors explore how technology nurtures, augments and modifies social or commercial interactions in tourism. The book emphasizes the role of fantasy and imagination in fluid tourism experiences and critically scrutinizes contested concepts pertaining to human interaction in cyberspace, such as equality, anonymity, transparency, democratization, and publicity culture. The chapters summon insights from media studies, actor-network theory, communicative action and symbolic convergence among others, and offer a palette of emerging methods suitable for academic enquiries of virtual worlds. The theoretical grounding, empirical evidences, and interdisciplinary analysis of the anthology expand the actual research agenda and shed light on conceptual tensions and ambiguities in the present literature. As such, Tourism social media : transformations in identity, community and culture contributes to increasing research reflexivity in tourism studies at large.