Banal Globalization? Embodied Actions and Mediated Practices in Tourists’ Online Photo Sharing

Abstract

This chapter examines a particular instance of photo-sharing on Flickr: the posting of forced perspective snapshots taken by tourists at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. This media site provides solid evidence for the ubiquity and circulation of tourist practices; it also affords insight into tourist's reflexivity and creativity, however limited these may be. Special attention is given to the way the embodied and (re)mediated practices of force perspective photography are further framed by their posters (e.g., in titles and descriptions) and by commenters. The specific sociolinguistic focus is on the multilayering and multimodality of stancetaking; these micro-level evaluations (or social judgments) reveal how posters/commenters perform their identities as (good or “knowing”) tourists, and how key ideologies of tourism are collectively and cumulatively realized. The seemingly trivial (i.e., singular and playful) practices of online photo-sharing are thereby also enactments of “banal globalization”.