社交媒体应用对中国旅游者的社会化影响研究——基于社交媒体网站数据的分析

The Influence of Social Media on the Socialization of Chinese Tourists:An Analysis of Social Media Data

社交媒体网站为中国用户提供了开放的交流空间,让用户可以自由交流思想情感以及对旅游和生活的认知见解,除此之外还为用户提供了相互交往的新途径。本文应用内容分析法,对在中国使用广泛的、与旅游有关的3个社交媒体网站搜索内容进行研究,探讨了中国旅游者如何使用社交媒体实现信息共享、经验分享和社交分享。本文认为,社交媒体不仅是信息沟通渠道,也促进着中国旅游者的社会化进程。

Social media（SM） plays an important role in tourism. It shapes how travellers make decision and change their pre-travel, during travel and post- travel behaviours. SM has also influenced tourism industry practice in the areas of marketing, sales and product development. How Chinese nationals engage with SM in tourism activities is under researched. There have been statistics reporting the usage of the Internet and ICT applications by Chinese nationals. However these statistics are simply descriptive parameters, and cannot provide in-depth insight into SM adoption for tourism in China. Therefore, this study explores the use of SM in tourism-related activities in China with the aim to understand the role of SM in China＇s tourism sphere. The research focused on the use of three most popular SM websites, which were RenRen, Sina Weibo and Douban, in tourism-related activities in China. The exploratory research has identified that Chinese use SM to share information about, and personal evaluation of, destinations, tourism products, itineraries of travel, visa and currency exchange. The selected SM sites provide Chinese users a space for open communication and freely exchange of ideas, emotions and cognitive insights into travel, life and being. The technology also offers them a new way of socialising with each other. Renren and Donban in particular give Chinese bloggers a space to freely extemalise their deep reflection on travel, life and being in the public domain. Through this process of knowledge transformation, a discursive discourse of tourism representation and understanding is created and re-created. Therefore, SM is more than just an information communication channel. It is a creator that enables the expansion of tourism boundary and a shaper that constantly shapes tourism as a human social conduct within that boundary. The paper argues that SM should not only be regarded as information communication channels, but also a creator and a shaper to forge what tourism is in the contemporary societies.