Speaker
Description
Maria Cristina Paganoni
Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Mediations
University of Milan
mariacristina.paganoni@unimi.it
‘Travel Back Better’: Digital Discourses of Sustainable Tourism
The concept of ‘travelling back better’ that imbues the post-pandemic global tourism industry emphasises the urgency of sustainable tourism practices. As a matter of fact, today sustainable travel is invoked by multiple stakeholders, including tourism national boards, airlines, young climate activists and travel influencers, down to consumers that increasingly rate environmentally-friendly behaviour positively (Torkington et al. 2020; Mariani & Borghi 2022; Paganoni 2022; Kilipiri et al. 2023; Piispa 2023). However, the fragmentation of approaches, industry-oriented greenwashing and a lack of a culture of sustainability hamper more responsible forms of tourism and travel.
Considering this complex landscape, this paper concentrates on instances of virtual communities that strive to gather around a collective vision of sustainable tourism (Al Zidjaly 2019). To this purpose, the focus will be placed on the Future of Tourism Coalition, a partnership of six non-governmental, non-profit organisations that have joined forces to educate in sustainable tourism, supported by an impressive number of signatories. By examining the Coalition’s website and those of its partners with the tools of Critical Discourse Studies, the paper explores how sustainable tourism is discursively constructed in terms of values, priorities and objectives in the post-pandemic context.
References
Al Zidjaly, N. (2019). Society in Digital Contexts: New Modes of Identity and Community Construction. Multilingua 38(4), 357-375. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2018-0042.
Kilipiri, E., Papaioannou, E., & Kotzaivazoglou, I. (2023). Social Media and Influencer Marketing for Promoting Sustainable Tourism Destinations: The Instagram Case. Sustainability. 15(8), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15086374.
Mariani, M., & Borghi, M. (2022). Exploring Environmental Concerns on Digital Platforms through Big Data: The Effect of Online Consumers’ Environmental Discourse on Online Review Ratings, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2022.2033982.
Paganoni, M.C. (2022). Framing the New Normal in Tourism Discourse: A Focus on Air Travel. Lingue e Linguaggi 52, 249-264.
Piispa, M. (2023). Travelling by Ground: Young Climate Activists and the Everyday Utopia of Sustainable Travel. Applied Mobilities 8(1), 81-96. https://doi.org/10.1080/23800127.2021.2015822.
The Future for Tourism Coalition. https://www.futureoftourism.org.
Torkington, K., Stanford, D., & Guiver, J. (2020). Discourse(s) of Growth and Sustainability in National Tourism Policy Documents, Journal of Sustainable Tourism 28 (7), 1041-1062. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1720695.
