(Digitally entangled) touristic placemaking: locative media, algorithmic navigation & affective orderings
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Date
01/03/2022Author
Bassett, Kath
Metadata
Abstract
In this thesis, I explore the ways in which the locative platform, TripAdvisor mediates
touristic placemaking through a case study which centres on Edinburgh’s Harry Potter
tourism scene. This case study is based on three years (2018-2021) of digital,
ethnographic research and is illustrative of a setting in which algorithmic navigation is
essential to maintaining and/or establishing one’s touristic service in time and space.
Drawing on ‘relational materialist’ histories of tourism, work which elaborates on
Foucauldian notions of governance, ANT/STS and digital sociological scholarship, I
forward an imagining of this genre of platform as ‘geo-pastoral technologies’ and ‘social
partners’ to cultural-economic actors who accommodate tourists in the destinations
travelled. This conceptualisation is useful for making sense of the specific qualities of this
partnership which emerged in my corpus of data -- including it functioning as a
‘promotional partner’ and being used as a ‘thinking partner’ -- and enables me to position
these qualities as ongoing accomplishments which require work on the part of touristic
organisations mapped on the platform. This work, and particularly the ‘socio-technological
techniques’ developed and mobilised to maintain this partnership demonstrate how the
algorithmic navigation of locative media platforms is a complex, collective, and more-than-digital endeavour. In particular, I argue that the algorithmic navigation of TripAdvisor can
be understood as a form of ‘affective ordering’ which involves: attempting to translate
affects onto the platform, attending to the content which accumulates on the platform, and
sometimes assembling a digital response and/or re-ordering the collective of things and
factors which are understood to be preventing them from assembling a “good experience”,
and in doing so attempting to differently affect future touristic audiences. I conclude by
reflecting on what this ethnographic case study can contribute to our understanding of
platform governance, algorithmic navigation, touristic working practice, and orderings.