Pascalle SEBUS, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Even though walking has never gone out of style, recent years have driven an increasing group of people to explore the world on foot and ‘disconnect’ from their everyday lives. Indeed, at first sight walking tourism seems to be a fully embodied practice. Yet the increasing availability of digital tools that help to prepare and communicate the touristic adventure are changing the way tourists engage with these embodied experiences (Van Nuenen & Scarles, 2021).
This paper therefore questions the implications of using digital tools during an ‘embodied’, walking touristic experience. How do walking tourists use digital tools? And how do they experience the physical and digital environment of their journey? These questions tie in to current, broader debates on the relevance of dichotomous distinctions such as online versus offline (Favero, 2018; Hine, 2020), embodiment versus disembodiment (Favero, 2018; Hine, 2020), gazers versus gazees (Urry & Larsen, 2011), and dichotomies of walking itself (Rabbiosi, 2021). This paper will also contribute to an expansion of knowledge on the mediation of tourism, which has become especially relevant with the increasing move to digital interferences within the tourist experience (Van Nuenen & Scarles, 2021).
The case studies included in this paper are separate topics within three ongoing ethnographic studies, which together form a PhD study on the digital mediation of contemporary tourist experiences. This paper will address the first findings of three ethnographic case studies, which started in autumn 2021 and will end in spring 2022. By using various ethnographic methods, visual elicitation and an experimental set-up of based on ‘sense walking’ (Kartal, 2021), it explores the digital mediation of urban soundwalks and app-guided tours in Antwerp (Belgium), a VR walking tour in Cologne (Germany), and the popular pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela (Spain).
Mots clés : digital mediation|technology|authenticity|ethnography|walking
A103936PS