The Impact of Social Media inTourist Identity Creation : A netnographic study of travel posts on Cyprus

Sammanfattning: Two years after the COVID-19 pandemic it appears that the consumer behaviour oftourism is returning to pre-pandemic unsustainable behaviour. Whereas scholarscontinually stress that tourism needs to transform if it is to remain a viable option forfuture generations. Additionally, the rapid innovations of technology in thisdigitalising society are affecting how tourism is managed and experienced, especially,the current rise of visual content. Therefore, this thesis aimed to investigate thedynamic relationship between visual content and the tourist identity to find nudgingareas for social change. A netnographic study was conducted of travel posts onCyprus and the main findings were that the tourist identity is mainly constructedthrough user generated content and official promotional material have little influence.The main content categories belonging to Cyprus’ tourist identity are the beach, wateractivities, historic villages, food, and partying. Indicating that nudging tourists inthese categories will be most effective.