Understanding Valuing Devices in Tourism through “Place-making”

Abstract

The paper explores how valuing devices and verification mechanisms such as user-generated content (UGC) websites partake in performing placeness. The findings are based upon a corpus of data including a case study at the offices of the largest user-generated travel website, TripAdvisor, a longitudinal netnographic approach and a conceptual review. Originally inspired by theorists of space we treat places as sites of becoming that are performed through everyday practices. In claiming that places become meaningful only in and through practices we stress the importance of treating rating and ranking mechanisms as generative, rather than merely reductive algorithmically produced representations. By juxtaposing traditional enactments of traveling, we are discussing how placeness has been transformed and how this has fueled a series of further revisions to valuing tourism. We conclude the paper by appreciating the multiplicity of performativity as being implicated in the algorithmic configurations on contemporary valuing devices and enacted as we read, interpret, write, imagine. It is suggested that although earlier valuing devices have evoked place-making in various ways, the rise of UGC websites has converted the travel experience into a constant negotiation process whereby both the value of places and the value of valuing devices are contested.

A representação coletiva dos bares e restaurantes “pé-na-areia” produzida pelo dispositivo TripAdvisor: o caso de Aracaju-Sergipe

“…N. 30 JAN./JUN. | 2017 seus sentidos de lugar (Baka, 2015). As discussões mais recentes não se limitam a buscar no substrato das interações mentais a disposição de modificação de representações coletivas, mas estendem à capacidade dos algoritmos, muitas vezes inseridos em programas de computador, em alterar a maneira como separamos, classificamos e hierarquizamos pessoas, objetos e lugares, possibilitando o surgimento do que Striphas (2015) chama de Cultura do Algoritmo (Algoritmic Culture).…”

Socio-technological authentication

“…Conceptualising valuation and decision making in this way recognises that it is dynamic, subject to contestation and based on the interaction of diverse agencies with disparate capacities and interests. Importantly, for the current discussion, it is possible to argue that tourism objects and experiences are subjected to similar processes of valuation during which authentication claims are made and used to make judgements about value (Baka, 2015).…”

“…Co-created performance of expertise reflects growing consumer empowerment and the diffusion of power in valuation processes (Baka, 2015;Mellet, Beauvisage, Beuscart, & Trespeuch, 2014). However, consumer performance of expertise is subject to appropriation and (re)enrolment by organisations in their value calculations.…”

“…Many recommender systems require reviewers to register and establish legitimate algorithmic identities. Content providers and users can thus scrutinise reviewers' travel history and expert credibility to qualify trustworthiness in the virtual network (Baka, 2015;Jeacle & Carter, 2011). Content providers may reinforce this qualification process by showing how many posts users have made and how their posts are rated by others users.…”

Migrant entrepreneurship, value-creation practices and urban transformation in São Paulo, Brazil

“…Drawing on insights from valuation studies (Baka, 2015;Ren & Mahadevan, 2018;Ren, Petersen, & Dredge, 2015) we consider different forms of agency exercised by migrant entrepreneurs. We argue that these actors engage in various strategies of value creation by mobilising and circulating, in different dimensions, aspects of migrants' histories, identities, cultural knowledge and objects, particularly associated with food and its commercial provision.…”