Emediating the tourist gaze: memory, emotion and choreography of the digital photograph

Abstract

Robinson (Current Issues Tour Res 15(4):353–367, 2012, Mediating the tourist experience from brochures to virtual encounters. Farnham, Ashgate, 2013) explored the notion of an e-mediated tourist gaze. This paper builds on this idea, in order to evaluate the context within which images are recorded, manipulated and distributed. Google Earth is selected as the medium for this because its geo-spatial format links tourist photographs to the site where the image was captured. The research adopts a primarily qualitative inductive study to identify sociological perspectives on the collection, publication and sharing of images online, using members of Google Earth forums as the sample, and asking further questions around travel planning to tie the research back to the relationship between online image and travel from a production perspective. The research identifies strong links with memory, emotion and choreography and proposes that digital images have created new areas for research into electronic visual media. Whilst Urry and Larsen (The tourist gaze 3.0. Sage, London, 2011) note that these images potentially lead an unprotected and uncontrolled afterlife, it is argued that they also serve a purpose for a future-self as a mediator of nostalgia. The research develops hypotheses for future research around the emotional relationships bound up in the creation and collection of tourism images and the role of the e-mediated gaze.