Digital tourism gaze and mega events

Tourism and photography have been always strongly interlinked. With the rise of smartphones and social network travellers’ photography exit the boundaries of friends and family and is now available to a wider audience. This is challenging the tourism gaze theory, which postulate that tourists photography is industry-driven and socially constructed. This exploratory research studied a visual social network to understand travellers digital mediated gaze during a mega event. Particularly the study shades lights on iconic places/attractions portrayed and on the ideal self represented by the event goers highlighting the presence of iconic places and staged personal pictures.