Global perspectives on media tourism

16 December 2022
10:00-12:00 local time (Sweden)

In today’s globalized, transnational, and digitalized media environment, popular culture plays a significant role in the establishment and (re)negotiation of place identities and the ways in which people relate to physical locations. Traveling to film locations, participating in fan re-enactments, or visiting theme parks are some of the varied and multifaceted ways in which the ties between people’s worlds of imagination and the real worlds they inhabit are made tangible through place. In recent years an increasing number of studies from a range of different disciplines investigating the phenomenon of “media tourism” have appeared. But despite the large number of empirical studies, most have been limited to isolated, Western examples. To move this field of research to the next level, a more interdisciplinary, comparative, and cross-case approach is essential.

The aim of this panel is to explore and discuss new directions in media tourism research, emphatically from a global and cross-cultural perspective. After an introduction by Stijn Reijnders, four researchers from different parts of the world will present their work on film tourism in Brazil (Debora Póvoa), fan sites in Japan (Timo Thelen), Bollywood tourism in a transcultural context (Apoorva Nanjangud), and film tourism research around the globe (Sean Kim).

Sean Kim, Associate Professor of Tourism and Creative Industries at the School of Business & Law in Edith Cowan University, Australia

Apoorva Nanjangud, Postdoctoral researcher, Radboud Institute of Culture and History, Radboud University

Débora Póvoa, lecturer and PhD candidate at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Stijn Reijnders, Professor at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Geomedia Visiting Professor

Timo Thelen, Lecturer at the School of International Studies in Kanazawa University.

Schedule:

10.00-10.10

Introduction Stijn Reijnders

10.10-10.30

Débora Póvoa: “Film tourism in Brazil - Learning from local perspectives”

10.30-10.50

Timo Thelen: “Place making of a fan pilgrimage site - the case study of Hita, Japan”

11.50-11.10

Apoorva Nanjangud: “Bonding over Bollywood: Understanding the potential of Bollywood tourism in cultural diplomacy”

11.10-11.30

Sangkyun Kim: “Film tourism revisited. From a critical systems perspective”

11.30-12.00

Panel discussion and Q&A

Abstracts and Bios

Débora Póvoa: “Film tourism in Brazil - Learning from local perspectives”

While it has been reported that film tourism can bring important economic contributions to locations – often summarized and celebrated by terms like “Downton”- and “Braveheart-effect” – research has shown that the phenomenon might also have detrimental effects, such as overcrowding and cultural commodification. What determines the success or failure of film tourism? In this presentation, I address this question by analysing the case of Brazil, where film tourism occurs in a spontaneous and unplanned manner, and often in socially, economically and environmentally vulnerable locations. Taking the perspective of local stakeholders involved in three emergent film tourism ecologies in the country, I demonstrate how film tourism benefits are often only temporary – a phenomenon I called “telenovela effect” – and how the success and sustainability of film tourism initiatives depend on a series of factors, from structural characteristics of the targeted location to the configuration of the audio-visual industry at country level.

Débora Póvoa is a lecturer and PhD candidate at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research examines film tourism initiatives in vulnerable locations of Brazil. She is also a board member of the Netherlands Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (NALACS), film review editor of the European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (ERLACS) and selection committee member of the International Science Film Festival Nijmegen (InScience).

Timo Thelen: “Place making of a fan pilgrimage site - the case study of Hita, Japan”

Film/media tourism is infamous for its unpredictability and careful strategic planning is imperative, as seen with Western literature. My talk presents an example of this issue from Japan. The rural city of Hita set on its development agenda the goal to become a fan pilgrimage site for the manga/anime series Attack on Titan. However, the only connection between media product and place is the fact that the author originates from there. Even so, the city has created within three years an extensive tourist infrastructure including a museum and countless branded souvenirs which hold little to no value. This commodification has led to the alienation of many fans who had once initiated this development. By drawing on the results of this case study, I will discuss why the voices of fans/tourists should be a core element in the place making process of media-related sites – not just at the beginning but throughout.

Timo Thelen (Ph.D.) is Lecturer at the School of International Studies in Kanazawa University. He has studied Japanese Studies and Cultural Anthropology in Dusseldorf and Tokyo. His research focusses on media, tourism and rural culture. His monograph Revitalization and Internal Colonialism in Rural Japan (Routledge) was released in 2022. His articles were published in Tourism Recreation Research, Current Issues in Tourism, Participations, East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, Japanese Studies and Japan Forum.

Apoorva Nanjangud: “Bonding over Bollywood: Understanding the potential of Bollywood tourism in cultural diplomacy”

Bollywood, India’s face of popular culture, has shown ample potential in mobilizing representations of people, places and cultural heritage of destinations. Due to the burgeoning of the Indian and south Asian diasporic communities globally, Bollywood cinema has long gone beyond just a national media and cultural industry turning into a prominent global media production hub. As India’s “soft power” (Thussu, 2016), Bollywood’s “contra” flows (Thussu, 2006) have resulted in structural shifts in global power relations and policymaking around Bollywood cinema and ensuing transnational tourism flows. Not only is Bollywood- with its various media affordances- generating tourism to various global locations, but it is also becoming a means to represent destinations in ways needed. Particularly, it is interesting to unravel what this image-making potential of Bollywood, means for destinations represented. In this talk I reflect on how placemaking within Bollywood cinema, and Bollywood tourism in particular, serves India’s global presence, as means to form international cultural relations.

Apoorva Nanjangud, Postdoctoral researcher, Radboud Institute of Culture and History, Radboud University. Her PhD project (2016–2021) on Bollywood Tourism was a part of the European Research Council funded project ‘Worlds of Imagination’ that aimed to investigate Media tourism in India. Her work has been published into journals such as European Journal of Cultural Studies, Tourist Studies, Current Issues in Tourism and South Asian Popular Culture

Sean Kim: “Film tourism revisited. From a critical systems perspective”

Fascination with motion pictures in the past several decades has led to an unprecedented shift in cultures and sub-cultures, not least in desires to feel and experience the context featured through the screen. We thus cast attention to the phenomenon of film tourism that emphasizes travelling to locations featured in motion pictures including movies, television series, and animated films. The emergence of the phenomenon naturally resulted in scholarly attention over the past two decades, which has carved a growing tourism field of research of its own whilst being inextricably interdisciplinary in nature. In this talk, I share a scientometric systematic literature review of global film tourism literature to provide a critical systems perspective on film tourism, delineating four distinct clusters of research, gaps in the literature, and directions for future research.

Sean Kim (Ph.D.) is Associate Professor of Tourism and Creative Industries at the School of Business & Law in Edith Cowan University, Australia. He is an internationally recognized scholar in the field of film tourism and its broader impacts and implications. His work is international and interdisciplinary at the boundaries of social psychology, cultural studies, media studies, geography, and tourism. He is Associate Editor of Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research and Co-Editor of Film Tourism in Asia: Evolution, Transformation and Trajectory (2018).