Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.37741/t.69.1.7
Nationalism in Official Tourism Websites of Balkan Countries: A Multimodal Analysis
Linda Houliston
orcid.org/0000-0002-3174-7620
; International Hospitality and Tourism Management student, Varna University of Management, Varna, Bulgaria
Stanislav Ivanov
orcid.org/0000-0002-6851-5823
; Varna University of Management, Varna, Bulgaria
Craig Webster
; Department of Management, Miller College of Business, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, USA
Abstract
This paper investigates the official tourism websites for the Balkan countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Turkey to learn about their depictions of their nations for an international tourism market. The research combines Pauwels' (2012) multimodal discourse analysis method designed for cultural websites with Smith's (1998) six main institutional dimensions to seek out potential nationalistic patterns involving the state, territory, language, religion, history, and rites and ceremonies. The findings mostly involve verbal and visual signifiers that have a historical context to them such as antiquity, communism, Yugoslavia, religion, irredentism, the Ottoman Empire, and national identity. The findings illustrate that official websites, while being sensitive not to alienate international tourists, portray a sense of nationalism but do so in a different way, based upon the historical experiences and unique features of each country surveyed.
Keywords
nationalism; destination marketing; Balkan tourism; Balkan nationalism; destination websites
Hrčak ID:
254694
URI
Publication date:
27.3.2021.
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