Social media-based visual humour use in tourism marketing:
Social media-based visual humour use in tourism marketing:
a semiotic perspective
Author(s): Jing GeSubject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Media studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Communication studies, Sociology, Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, Descriptive linguistics, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Tourism
Published by: Krakowskie Towarzystwo Popularyzowania Wiedzy o Komunikacji Językowej Tertium
Keywords: humour; visual social media marketing; visual message strategies; tourism; destination marketing organizations
Summary/Abstract: Tourism firms using visual social media marketing are struggling with its implementation, specifically in formulating engagement-based visual message strategies. Yet, creating such appealing posts can lead to positive brand and financial outcomes. Humour has been identified as a potent tool for social media communication, given its capability to develop social interactions. Yet, how humour works on social media is not well understood – specifically its visual form. Treating humour as a symbolic resource, this study adopted a compound content analysis-semiotic analysis to identify visual content and its symbolic meaning embedded in destination marketing organization (DMO)’s social media posts. 200 Sina Weibo posts containing humour images initiated by 5 Chinese provincial DMOs were collected. The results show 6 types of humour content and 6 types of symbolic meaning – none of which are product-related. This study advances the tourism literature and humour theory, and offers tourism firms a holistic view of how to fully leverage social media-based visual humour to achieve consumer reach and engagement.
Journal: The European Journal of Humour Research
- Issue Year: 7/2019
- Issue No: 3
- Page Range: 6-25
- Page Count: 20
- Language: English