(Digitally entangled) touristic placemaking: locative media, algorithmic navigation & affective orderings

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.