From Media Phantom To Media Sharing:A Study On The Mediatization Of Tourism Experience

In 1964,Marshall McLuhan put forward in his book "Understanding Media:The Extensions of Man":"The media is an extension of the human body",which opened the institutional perspective of Toronto School of communication to re-examine the relationship between the sociocultural patterns and human mind by means of media and media analysis techniques.Although the school has been challenged by academics since its founding,the fact is irrefutable that media practice and media logic have been deeply embedded in and influence the development of social culture in today and in the future with the rapid development of new media and new technologies.The practice of tourism has been accompanied by the practice of media culture since its inception.The rapid development of media technology and the changes of media symbols have made modern tourism present a high degree of media ecology and trend.The continuous convergence of media practice and tourism practice has promoted the mediatization process of tourism experience.The mediatization of tourism experience is a tourism experience process based on media logic.It integrates media experience and tourism experience and internalizes it as an institutionalized lifestyle of people in a mediated society,which affects people’s attitudes and behavior patterns in tourism practice.In the practice of mediated tourism,tourists usually experience the media landscape before experiencing the real tourism landscape.This media-led tourism experience is also called "imaginative hedonism"(Jansson,2002).Mediated tourism expectations are essentially the result of media information management.It is the recognition and acquisition of media phantom,and the construction of an imaginative pleasant psychological experience process.Media phantom refers to the process by which people perceive and identify the media or mirror image through "gazing" the real or fictitious symbols presented by the media,and confuse the "phantom" with the "real" in real life to construct imaginative identity.Media phantom is also an acquisition process by which people obtain the experience of the world and self-cognition through media."Media phantom" in cultural studies not only hides the control intention of ideology,but also involves individual conscious resistance.The diachronic pleasure of mediated tourism experience has surpassed the traditional travel experience stage,extending to the "three stages of tourism experience",including tourism expectations,real travel experience and sharing satisfaction.On the basis of literature review,this article builds a "conceptual framework for the mediatization of tourism(extended)experience".The framework takes pre-tourism,during-tourism and post-tourism as the chronological order,and distributes media experience and tourism practice in the form of space integration,constructing the three-stage framework of mediated tourism experience with"tourism expectations under the media phantom","real tourism practice with media imitation" and "tourism satisfaction by media sharing".An empirical analysis methods is adopted to test the correlation and influence relationship among the three stages,so as to explore the logical appeal of the framework.Data analysis results show that the three stages of mediated tourism experience-media phantom(MP),media imitation(MI),and media sharing(MS)have a significant correlativity and causal relationship.Moreover,the media sharing variable shows procedural and cyclical feature of its influence on the other 2 variables.Media sharing variables not only have significant explanatory power for media phantom variables and media imitation variables,but are also the most significant motive of media imitation behavior in real tourism experience.The "authenticity" of tourism experience is the core issue of the significance of tourism and tourism research.From objective reality to subjective construction,from modernist construction reality to postmodernism deconstruction reality,most of these philosophies are developed based on the relationship between tourism experience and tourism products.The media phantom in the mediated tourism experience and the media sharing in the extended stage make the metaphorical meaning of the tourism experience obvious,which makes the authenticity of the tourism experience a prominent issue in the research of the media tourism experience.The authenticity and satisfaction of the media tourism experience is not simply based on the interaction with tourism products.On the contrary,the "authenticity" of the tourism experience deeply influenced by the mediatization process has crossed over the relationship between the "thing" and the "self".It focuses on the construction of identity and social relations in the context of "Self" and "My Social Network".The construction of social relations,the essential attribute of tourism experience,is defined as the primary nature of tourism in this study.In the spatial context constructed by the media,tourists’ pursuit of experience is the reconstruction of identity and social network.In the process of "reconstruction",its real identity and real social relations are constantly being deconstructed.The social context attribute is the formal attribute of tourism experience,which is defined as the secondary nature of tourism.The formal attribute will change with the separation and integration of social context.The social network landscape is a specific social context that matches with the mediated tourism experience behavior.In the context of social networks,people use their imaginative "Self" to construct the"Self" in the eyes of others,as well as a self-centered social network.