Slumming on Social Media? E-Mediated Tourist Gaze and Social Representations of Indian, South African, and Brazilian Slum Tourism Destinations
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an excellent paper and one that contributes greatly to our understanding of how tourists navigate and re-produce the slum as mediated through social media. The data collection was extensive and the methodology is rigorous and presents an entirely new approach to our understandings of slum tourism. I only have a few recommendations for improvement. Well done.
- line 135 - should say 'few' rather than 'a few'
- line 137 - 'studies mainly involve'
- Your discussion of the gaze should also include at least a passing mention of the host gaze as well - residents are active participants in shaping representations as well, not merely passive recipients of the tourists' gaze.
- Has social representations theory been mentioned in the tourism literature or used to inform other critical tourism studies? It would be good to mention these here as well.
- line 211 - either 'as a mediated form' or 'as mediated forms'
- line 616 - one tourists report.
Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to interact with this paper. I look forward to seeing the final article.
Author Response
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REV1 . Comments and Suggestions for Authors |
Reply |
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This is an excellent paper and one that contributes greatly to our understanding of how tourists navigate and re-produce the slum as mediated through social media. The data collection was extensive and the methodology is rigorous and presents an entirely new approach to our understandings of slum tourism. I only have a few recommendations for improvement. Well done. |
Thanks for the appreciation and the positive feedback |
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line 135 - should say 'few' rather than 'a few' |
Corrected. Thanks for pointing this out! |
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line 137 - 'studies mainly involve' |
Corrected. Thanks for pointing this out! |
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Your discussion of the gaze should also include at least a passing mention of the host gaze as well - residents are active participants in shaping representations as well, not merely passive recipients of the tourists' gaze. |
Thanks for the suggestion. It is indeed a key aspect of the host-tourist encounters. We added a couple of sentences and references to the introduction and the conclusion just to make it explicit to the readers (lines. 108-112 and 135-137). |
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Has social representations theory been mentioned in the tourism literature or used to inform other critical tourism studies? It would be good to mention these here as well. |
Thanks for the suggestion. We’ve added a few references to illustrate the way social representations theory has been used in recent studies on tourism and tourist destination (lines 195-203) |
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line 211 - either 'as a mediated form' or 'as mediated forms' |
Corrected. Thanks for pointing this out! |
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line 616 - one tourists report. |
Corrected. Thanks for pointing this out! |
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Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to interact with this paper. I look forward to seeing the final article. |
Thank you again! |
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript analyses a social media representation of slum tourism in three different study area (India, South Africa and Brazil) with the help of reviews from the TripAdvisor. The aim of the research is clear and original, the theoretical background is well-established. The paper has a particularly developed methodology, with which the author(s) were able to answer their research questions. The results are statistically well supported and the discussion adequately refers back to the literature. Overall, I consider it to be an extremely accurate work that fills the research gap in the literature to a great extent.
I am missing one element that would make the difference between reality and information appearing on social media. The author(s) rightly emphasize(s) the influential role of the social media, but at the end of their discussion they do not point out that their research only analyzes the representation of the slum tourism in the online space itself. Future research direction can be either the analysis of these difference with a field observation or a questionnaire survey.
Author Response
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REV2 . Comments and Suggestions for Authors |
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The manuscript analyses a social media representation of slum tourism in three different study area (India, South Africa and Brazil) with the help of reviews from the TripAdvisor. The aim of the research is clear and original, the theoretical background is well-established. The paper has a particularly developed methodology, with which the author(s) were able to answer their research questions. The results are statistically well supported and the discussion adequately refers back to the literature. Overall, I consider it to be an extremely accurate work that fills the research gap in the literature to a great extent. |
Thanks for the appreciation and the positive feedback |
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I am missing one element that would make the difference between reality and information appearing on social media. The author(s) rightly emphasize(s) the influential role of the social media, but at the end of their discussion they do not point out that their research only analyzes the representation of the slum tourism in the online space itself. Future research direction can be either the analysis of these difference with a field observation or a questionnaire survey. |
Thank you for pointing this out! We have added this limitation and suggestion for future research to the discussion (lines 596-603). |
