Abstract
The industry of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) tourism continues to grow, and social media can serve as an essential tool to promote this trend. Although ICH tourism development is outstanding in China, the language structure and restricted use of social media render ICH difficult for non-Chinese speakers to understand. Using content analysis, this study investigates the structure and relationships among cognitive elements of ICH tourism based on 9074 blogs posted between 2011 and 2020 on Weibo.com, one of the most popular social media platforms in China. The main analysis process consisted of matrix construction, dimension classification, and semantic network analysis. Findings indicated that the cognitive image of ICH tourism on social media can be divided into seven dimensions: institutions, ICH and inheritors, tourism products, traditional festivals and seasons, tourism facilities and services, visitors, and regions. This network vividly illustrates ICH tourism and depicts the roles of organizers, residents, inheritors, and tourists. Among these elements, institutions hold the greatest power to regulate and control ICH tourism activities, and folklore appears to be the most common type of ICH resource that can be developed into tourism activities. Practically, the results offer insight for policymakers regarding ways to better balance the relationships among heritage protection, the business economy, and people’s well-being. Such strategies can promote the industrialization of ICH tourism. In addition, through content analysis, this paper confirms the effectiveness of social media in providing a richer understanding of ICH tourism.
Highlights
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), intangible cultural heritage (ICH) includes traditions or cultural expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as social practices, expressions, knowledge, handicrafts, and cultural spaces [1]
As national ICH discourse is currently dominated by the Chinese government, this paper examined ICH tourism cognition
ICH cognition could be divided into dimensions such as institutions, ICH and inheritors, tourism products, traditional festivals and seasons, tourism facilities and services, visitors, and regions
Summary
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), intangible cultural heritage (ICH) includes traditions or cultural expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as social practices, expressions, knowledge, handicrafts, and cultural spaces [1]. The Chinese government has placed the protection and inheritance of ICH in an important strategic position This policy guidance has encouraged government departments at various levels to provide ICH tourism activities through conservation associations, museums, characteristic towns, and cultural events. ICH elements such as traditional dance, music, drama, and folklore have come to represent spiritual and cultural treasures of mankind. These activities function as valuable resources that can be developed into tourism products. In prior decades, research on ICH tourism mainly focused on applied countermeasures to address common problems. Such efforts often included insufficient empirical analysis, rarely incorporating visitors’ feedback on ICH tourism products. Related research lacks comprehensive evaluations of tourists and their thoughts on ICH tourism development
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