Seeing Beyond Stereotypes: Symbolic Representations of Pakistan in Travel Vlogs
Keywords:
Travel Vlogs, Symbolic meanings, Visual Grammar, Tourism destinations, StereotypesAbstract
In the current digital world, travel vlogs play a significant role in shaping perceptions and images of tourist destinations. With the emerging trend of using social media for communication and influencing viewers, travel vloggers shape viewers’ perception and their travel choices. Researchers have conducted narrative and content analyses to study their effect and role in tourism; however, the use of multimodal features for meaning-making and the symbolic representation of tourist destinations needs to be explored, particularly in the Pakistani context. This study employs the Visual Grammar framework (2006) by Kress and van Leeuwen to examine how meanings are constructed symbolically in travel vlogs about Pakistan. The study examines the top ten travel vlogs, based on their view count on YouTube, to study how symbolic processes, symbolic attributive, and symbolic suggestive portray different facets of Pakistan’s beauty, culture, and values. Ten frames from the selected travel vlogs, representing the recurrent themes of hospitality, natural beauty, cultural identity, and calmness, were analysed. The study reveals that the travel vloggers thoughtfully use visual features such as colour choices, lighting, framing, and gestures to construct a persuasive symbolic narrative. These narratives of the travel vlogs frequently challenge the predominant stereotypes and portray Pakistan as a highly hospitable, culturally rich, and visually appealing peaceful tourism destination. This research presents a significant understanding of the use of visuals in tourism discourse, underscoring how meanings are made symbolically in the portrayal of countries and travel destinations.
References
Axon Marketing & Communications. (2018). White paper: Influencer marketing trends in the tourism sector for 2018. https://www.axonlatam.com
Banyai, M., & Glover, T. D. (2012). Evaluating research methods on travel blogs. Journal of Travel Research, 51(3), 267–277.
Bergmeister, F. (2015). Shaping Southeast Asia: Tracing tourism imaginaries in guidebooks and travel blogs. ASEAS – Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 8(2), 203–208. https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2015.2-6
Bosangit, C., McCabe, S., & Hibbert, S. (2009). What is told in travel blogs? Exploring travel blogs for consumer narrative analysis. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism (ENTER 2009).
Carson, D. (2008). The blogosphere as a market research tool for tourism destinations: A case study of Australia's Northern Territory. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 14(2), 111–119.
Chen, Y., Guo, Z., & Pan, Q. (2021). Analysis on the characteristics of travel vlog video and its impact on users’ travel intention. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2021) (pp. 169–175). Atlantis Press.
Cheng, Y., Wei, W., & Zhang, L. (2020). Seeing destinations through vlogs: Implications for leveraging customer engagement behavior to increase travel intention. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 32(10), 3227–3248. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-04-2020-0319
Elliot, S. (2009). The narrative construction of travel in user-generated video: The case of YouTube. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 26(5–6), 663–679. https://doi.org/10.1080/10548400903268169
Gurung, D. J., & Goswami, C. (2017). User-generated content on Sikkim as an image formation agent: A content analysis of travel blogs. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Systems, 10(2).
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Lange-Faria, W., & Elliot, S. (2012). Understanding the role of social media in destination marketing. Tourismos, 7(1), 193–211.
Liang, A. (2020). Exploring the formation and representation of destination images in travel vlogs on social media. International Journal of Education and Research, 5(5), 203–208.
Litvin, S., Goldsmith, R. E., & Pan, B. (2008). Electronic word-of-mouth in hospitality and tourism management. Tourism Management, 29(3), 458–468.
Zhou, Y., Jo, W., Flaherty, J., & Li, T. (2024). How Travel Vlogs Contribute to Destination Marketing: A Comparison with DMO Promotional Videos and the Moderating Role of Destination Competitiveness. International Journal of Tourism Research, 26(5), e2755. https://doi.org/10.1002/jtr.2755
Nielsen. (2015). Global trust in advertising: Winning strategies for an evolving media landscape. https://www.nielsen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/04/global-trust-in-advertising-report-sept-2015.pdf
Peralta, R. L. (2019). How vlogging promotes a destination image: A narrative analysis of popular travel vlogs about the Philippines. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-019-00134-6
Thurm, M. C. (2014). The impact of travel blogging on the tourist experience: An e-ethnographic investigation. https://arno.uvt.nl/show.cgi?fid=135452
Wegner, A. (2008). Analysis of travel bloggers’ characteristics and their communication about Austria as a tourism destination. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 14(2), 169–176.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
- The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
