Mediatized tourism. The convergence of media and tourism performances

Abstract: Popular culture and tourism are intertwining. The use of film and literature amongst destination marketing organisations is a global trend, but how can we understand this phenomenon and all the processes involved? Up to now popular culture and tourism have been researched mainly from a single media perspective. However, it is difficult to separate the impact of one media product from that of another, and it is now time to highlight the processes of multimediality. Moreover, this far most of the research has focused on destination marketing issues and not on the tourists involved in these processes. Therefore, it is relevant to explore in which sense these intertwined media products are part of tourists’ activities as well as of their understandings of places. The aim of this dissertation is to explore the different processes that emerge when tourism and popular cultural media products interweave, placing special emphasis on tourist performances and destinations. Roslyn Chapel, which is featured in The Da Vinci Code, and the hereto related tourism activities is the case studied in this dissertation. However, each of the papers included have a slightly different theoretical and methodological approach. The main theoretical concepts applied and discussed in the dissertation are mediatization, convergence and performance. Studying a single case this dissertation explores the different ongoing processes that this tourist place is part of, covering themes ranging from converging media products to tourists’ performances and sense of place in relation to popular cultural media products. The dissertation thereby adds to the expanding field of research, which is concerned with the intertwining of popular culture and tourism.