媒介驯化视角下导游“抖主”的角色演化历程

Towards the Digital Roles of Tour Guides on Douyin App from a Media Domestication Perspective

在移动短视频媒介全面渗透并赋能旅游业的背景下,部分尝试转型的导游正在面临角色分解与重塑的机遇与挑战,有必要结合新的媒介技术背景,系统剖析导游角色的动态演化历程。文章结合媒介驯化理论与导游角色模型的分析框架,以12名重庆市导游“抖主”为研究对象,对其进行持续1年的跟踪式观察,并开展两次半结构化访谈。研究发现,导游“抖主”的移动短视频媒介驯化实践中,不仅包含导游与外部媒介技术的互动协商,更涉及其对自我职能角色的深度思考,导游在驯化抖音成为其角色表达组件的同时,也通过“角色映射-角色适应-角色整合-(角色剥离)”的角色演化路径赋予传统角色以新的内涵,并演化出数字投射角色、数字演绎角色、数字运营角色和数字大使角色4类导游数字角色。研究通过刻画导游媒介驯化实践,揭示了人与技术关系背后蕴含的人之发展路径,为数字时代传统职能角色的数字化转型提供了理论补充与案例参考。

As one of the most important frontline service providers in the tourism industry,tour guides play a key role in facilitating tourism experiences and promoting sustainable tourism development.However,despite the widespread recognition of the important role of tour guides in tourism academia,the tour guide literature commonly suffers from weak theoretical foundations.This issue stems from the lag in conceptualization and theoretical development in this form of literature,as researchers often rely on the original role models for tour guides proposed by Cohen(1985),such as the primitive guide,tour leader,tourism motivator,and professional tour guide.This approach overlooks the dynamic evolution of the tour guide’s role in the context of new media technologies.In an era in which mobile short-form video platforms significantly influence and enhance the tourism sector,this study explores the evolving roles of tour guides amid these technological changes.Focusing on a group of 12 tour guides in Chongqing who have embraced the popular Chinese social media platform Douyin,this year-long observational study included two rounds of semi-structured interviews.This study integrated media domestication theory with an analysis of the role of tour guides by examining the complex interactions and negotiations that the 12 tour guides have with external media technologies,in addition to a deep introspection of the internal functions of their roles as tour guides.The process of adopting Douyin as an aspect of their role expression as tour guides leads to a redefinition of traditional roles,which culminates in the progression of“role projection-role adaptationrole integration-(role disengagement)”.Among these redefined traditional roles,role projection includes producing digital maps of tour guides’identities on Douyin and the stage when they initially began using digital media technologies to support their work.Role adaptation is reflected in the tour guides’overall spatiotemporal adaptation to their newly formed digital roles in their daily lives.Role integration is manifested through the extensive influences following the embedding of mobile shortvideo media within tour guides’strong and weak relationship networks.In nonideal development states,however,such as when tour guides experience technological anxiety or are unable to bear the pressure of their multiple roles,they may take conscious distancing measures to achieve role disengagement.This analysis resulted in the emergence of four roles for digital tour guides,namely:digital projector,digital operator,digital performer,and digital ambassador.This study not only delineates the tour guides’media domestication practices,but also sheds light on the underlying development of human-technology relationships.The findings further articulate the nuanced aspects of digital tour guide roles by offering valuable case studies and theoretical insights for the digital transformation of traditional tour guide roles in the modern digital era.