A Symbolic Hierarchy of Places: Global Inequalities in Tourism Narratives of the New York Times Travel Section

Abstract

We study the symbolic value of places using the case of global tourism where places are explicitly objectified for valorization. Unlike most prior research that uses tangible measurements like UNESCO's World Heritage Sites for global comparison of place-based symbolic values, we harness the power of computational text analysis to measure the symbolic value of places based on travel writings of the New York Times Travel Section. Our results demonstrate that there is a symbolic hierarchy among places depending on the various meanings of culture and nature and the degree of engagement with either topic. NYT travel writers valorize European regions for cultural tourism according to the broadest meanings of culture, and often engage with the region's history as a main topic of the travel article. However, other regions – particularly the ones with legacies of past colonization – are valorized for their nature's scenic beauty while obscuring the significance of their “cultural” values. Even when a place's “cultural” values are recognized, the meanings of culture tend to be limited in non-European regions. Our findings have implications for the enduring symbolic inequality of places at the global level.