The power of storytelling in social media.

Abstract

Tourists are increasingly connecting in online social networks (OSN) where they share content and coconstruct narratives of tourist destinations through their shared tourism experiences. The destinations give tourists a stage to act on where they perform a desirable self. Thus, their performances and performative acts reflect on how destinations are represented. This poses a challenge for destination management organisations (DMOs). They have to find ways to join the conversations of OSN users to influence perception of their destination. It is believed that DMOs ought to build alliances with tourists by empowering them to co-construct brand narratives and aligning their storytelling with DMOs’ preferred narratives. This research aims to assess the role of storytelling in mediating tourism experiences in order to identify ways for DMOs to build alliances to strengthen destination narratives. It examines a range of different storytellers and how they reinforce and undermine preferred narratives of DMOs, and how they might write different stories across different types of OSN due to their performativity. The practices and strategies DMOs adopt to strengthen storytelling in OSN are also examined.