Slumming on Social Media? E-Mediated Tourist Gaze and Social Representations of Indian, South African, and Brazilian Slum Tourism Destinations

Mauro Sarrica,Isabella Rega,Alessandro Inversini,Laura Soledad Norton

doi:10.3390/soc11030106

Mauro Sarrica, Isabella Rega + Show 2 more

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Slum tourism is a hotly debated genre of travel. While it may foster intercultural encounters with marginalised “others”, it is also accused of reinforcing stereotypes and exploitation. Both aspects are amplified by the communication through social media of the slum tourism experience, that contribute to challenge or confirm stigmatizing representations of slums and their inhabitants. Based on the theoretical constructs of the tourist gaze and of social representations, this article addresses this particular type of digital contact. A lexicometric approach was used to analyse an extensive corpus of reviews on TripAdvisor (N = 8126). The findings not only confirm common themes already identified by the literature: the eye-opening component of touring poverty and the gatekeeping function of guides; but also show the emergence of context-dependent specificities, such as a hedonistic feature in the Cape Town region; or the integration of favelas within the representations of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Furthermore, the results show the tension between the “othering” and the “sameing” mechanisms, making this tourism practice a space in which shallow and deep tourist gazes interact and co-exist, and are crucially mediated by the gatekeeper of the tours: the guide.

Highlights

Slum tourism is a controversial and fast-growing type of tourism in which tourists spend some time, from a couple of hours to a few days, visiting, touring, and experiencing the way of living of locals in shantytowns
Social media have a significant role to play in this scenario, because local tourism operators in slums mainly use online channels for marketing their businesses [5], and because they are a privileged space for intergroup contact [6]
To sum up the results from a comparative perspective, the analysis shows that two very distinct slum tourism experiences exist in South Africa according to the location visited and they are not part of the traditional representation of slum tourism

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Introduction

Slum tourism is a controversial and fast-growing type of tourism in which tourists spend some time, from a couple of hours to a few days, visiting, touring, and experiencing the way of living of locals in shantytowns. The “witnessing” dimension promoted by this phenomenon allows tourists to enter into contact with the “other”, to engage with issues of inequality and injustice and, to possibly be the trigger for social action and social change [2,4]. Social media have a significant role to play in this scenario, because local tourism operators in slums mainly use online channels for marketing their businesses [5], and because they are a privileged space for intergroup contact [6]. The importance of social media in slum tourism has been examined far only to a limited extent [2,9]

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