1164 | 193 | #good places on instagram | Gábor Michalkó; András Jancsik; Anna Irimiás; Monica Coronel
The explosive spread of the use of social media, especially Instagram, has opened up new horizons in tourism research (Volo and Irimiás, 2021). Approximately 4 million new photos per hour are uploaded to the most popular visual-sharing platform, and this enormous data source can be exploited for scientific purposes. Travel and tourism related Instagram content is among the most popular on the platform. _x000D_
The purpose of this research is to contribute to the theoretical debate on place attachment and the interpretation of the concept of ‘good places’ in tourism. Places are imbued with personal meanings catalysed by the interface between evocative values and individual characteristics. This symbolic relationship influences how a person thinks about and perceives places and featured “good places”. Good place’ is defined by Michalkó (2023:15) as a “tourism destination people talk about, recommend to others, return to visit and can imagine living there.” These attributes strongly link “good place” to place attachment and people’s well-being, concepts widely used in tourism. _x000D_
This explorative study deepens the understanding of how tourists perceive, communicate and share content about good places. To do so, between January and December 2022, we collected 11,155 post with the #goodplace hashtag by employing web scraping method. Metadata was analysed with a co-occurrence network and a selection of photos was analysed with visual analysis. Our aim was to investigate the main characteristics of tourist destinations referred to in everyday communication as “good places”. Preliminary results show that good places on Instagram are nature-based and are evocative in place representation. Managerial implications will also be discussed. _x000D_
_x000D_
Acknowledgement of funding_x000D_
The investigation was carried out in the framework of the research project “Geographical dimensions of the interpretation of a good place in the context of total tourism” supported by OTKA K134877._x000D_
_x000D_
Gábor Michalkó; András Jancsik; Anna Irimiás; Monica Coronel
CSFK Földrajztudományi Intézet; Budapesti Gazdasági Egyetem; Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem,
ID Abstract: 193