Discursive Competition in the Tourist Platform Economy of a Large City (Madrid)

Abstract

This research analyzes the discourses and narratives surrounding the platform tourism economy in a highly touristified city, using Madrid as a case study. Rather than focusing on the socio-economic or spatial transformations themselves, the study examines how these processes are discussed, identifying the discursive strategies employed by different actors and ideologies, along with the power relations embedded in these narratives. A corpus of literature was compiled from twelve newspapers with varying ideological orientations and categorized according to political stance, access mode, and ideological radicalism. Using the LancsBox concordancer, a quantitative analysis was conducted to identify key discursive categories and preferred lexical items across ideological positions. These findings informed a subsequent in-depth qualitative analysis aimed at uncovering the rationalities behind each discourse: who speaks, how, and with what intent. The results reveal a dominant left-wing narrative that emphasizes institutional and economic mechanisms underlying platform tourism, highlighting associated social and urban harms. In contrast, conservative and liberal narratives are divided into two strands: a ‘heretic’ discourse that promotes and defends this new economic model, but also its urban results (e.g., gentrification), and a more institutional narrative framing platform tourism as inevitable and benign, thereby concealing the underlying structures of power.

1. Introduction

This research proposes to analyze the discourses commonly constructed around the tourism platform economy of a large tourist-driven city, in this case Madrid. Notably, our focus is not the socioeconomic and/or geographical processes prompted by tourism within platform capitalism; rather, we consider how those processes are discussed, as well as the discursive competition between diverse speakers and the power relations revealed by such competition. In this context, we focus on who is saying what, how, and the goals of that discourse. This study is situated within urban discourse analysis—a relatively recent area in the social sciences that has yielded significant insights [1,2].

This research does not draw an epistemological boundary between the geographical impacts of the platform economy and the discourses it examines. Instead, it adopts a social constructivist approach, based on the premise that material and social realities are not external to discourse, but are shaped through it. From this view, discourses do not simply mirror reality—they play an active role in its (re)construction, through a dynamic, two-way relationship in which meaning and materiality are mutually constitutive [3]. Constructing narratives around these processes involves ‘things being done’—taking a performative stance that influences reality through the knowledge, imagination, and actions of the actors involved. In this sense, even if material and social spaces are the focus, discourses can also be seen as ‘places’ where social, economic, and spatial relations are produced and reproduced through conflict. Discourses, then, are not neutral or objective descriptions of events, nor just personal perceptions. Rather, they are intentional acts, embedded with the power relations already present in society [3]. Moreover, discourses have the capacity to influence the actions of social actors, and therefore, the decisions and policies implemented in a given city or concerning specific aspects of urban social life [4].

A particularly striking feature of the platform economy, when viewed through a discourse-oriented lens, is the lack of consensus around normative definitions that might clarify this supposedly new economic model [5,6,7], or its perceived economic, social, and spatial effects [7,8]. There remains significant variation—even in basic terminology. The most common terms in the literature are ‘platform economy’ and ‘collaborative economy’, but others include ‘gig economy’, ‘on-demand economy’, ‘peer-to-peer economy’ (P2P), and ‘collaborative consumption’ [5,6], along with 17 distinct terms identified by Dredge and Gyimóthy [9]. Though these labels describe the same phenomenon, each emphasizes different elements, reflecting both the interaction between economic and social activity [7] and ongoing efforts to highlight or obscure specific dimensions. This study adopts the term ‘platform economy’, which draws attention to the technological mediation central to these models. Still, it is important to note that ‘platform’ goes beyond digital interfaces to describe a business model structured around large-scale data organization and specific forms of governance and data management [10,11].

Although the term ‘collaborative economy’ is equally widespread, we argue that framing collaboration as a disruptive force—as is often the case in more favorable accounts—overlooks the longstanding, everyday forms of cooperation found in cohesive working-class and low-income communities. The only genuinely novel aspect is the facilitation of collaboration between strangers [7,9,12]. Moreover, while early platforms like Couchsurfing prioritized non-monetary exchanges, the field has since been overtaken by platforms driven primarily by profit rather than by mutual aid among equals [5]—including those now reshaping the tourism sector, which is our focus. As Schor [7] notes, the concept of a collaborative economy is itself a discursive construct shaped by neoliberal economic logic, which in turn fuels its further development. In this sense, the term does not just describe a set of practices—it also helps to justify, produce, and stabilize them [5,7].

Discourses specifically addressing tourism platforms largely mirror the broader ‘pro’ and ‘con’ narratives associated with the platform economy, albeit with sector-specific nuances. What becomes clear is that the tone of these discourses—whether positive or negative—depends entirely on the speaker’s position within the tourism platform ecosystem, whether as provider, client, or member of the host community. Notably, it is often the latter group—those embedded in the host setting—who are most adversely affected by tourism-related practices [8].

The advantages defended by diverse narratives within the touristic context tend toward economic aspects, including increased offer, lower costs that benefit consumers [8,13], and the possible actualization of underutilized resources [14], permitting their owners to become mini entrepreneurs [9]. Potential benefits are also cited for the sustainability of the sector, although doubts persist around such claims, with projections of ongoing exacerbation of neoliberalism’s most negative expressions [13].

On the contrary, negative discourses point mainly to increases in unemployment due to competition with the traditional tourism sector, which receives neither quantitative nor qualitative compensation from the ‘casualized’ jobs created through this new supply modality [8,13,15]. Also noted is a loss of quality in urban life due to the deterioration of social cohesion and community rights, whether individual or collective, which ultimately leads to conflicts between residents and tourists and other problems related to urban security [13].

While the transformation of social, economic, and labor relations must all be taken into account, so must the impacts on space itself, as illustrated in the case of the touristified city. At odds with the global nature of large companies and their aura of immateriality is the fact that they are driving large-scale activity concentrated into specific urban spaces that offer the material and demographic density required to make their financial logic profitable. As Shaw [16] indicates, the ‘platformization’ of society has built its prototype within the urban space, and the city has been its primary site of experimentation.

Beyond platforms offering goods (such as Amazon), or advertising and social media (Facebook), or infrastructure for digital communications (Google), the connection between urban logic and platform logic is especially significant in the case of what are known as ‘lean companies’—enterprises without the assets or workforce necessary to produce the services they intermediate [11]. These would include the cases of Uber, Airbnb, and practically all platforms focused on mobility, tourism, leisure, and delivery. Mediating between consumers and the ‘independent contractors’ who provide the labor force and necessary goods, the lean platform outsources most of its costs and retains few assets (apart from those required to maintain and manage itself) [10].

As Strüver and Baurield [11] note, the expansion of such lean platforms has produced huge impacts (both short- and long-term) on the urban economy and its social relations, prompting changes to consumption patterns, infrastructures, and working conditions. These impacts have caused a general “platformization of urban life” [11] (p. 13) and affect urban society as a whole, even for those who ignore such services or whose direct social, economic, and labor relations are not affected.

As Richardson has remarked [17], platforms have no fixed territory, but they draw on territorialized networks and, by doing so, alter the urban form. Thus, rather than producing a spatial pattern of their own, they reconfigure existing patterns and generate new spatialities [18]. This entails the integration of spaces and bodies into a network of new interrelations, transforming the materiality of space as well as its perception and symbolism.

A key issue concerns the creation and governance of these new spatialities. Platforms use algorithms to manage and optimize user interactions and behaviors, resulting in opaque, centralized control over both data and decision-making processes. This raises serious concerns around equity, social justice, and democratic accountability. Beyond challenging existing regulatory frameworks—and deepening urban inequality—platforms also shape how urban space is lived and how alternative futures within it are imagined [18]. In doing so, they restrict the physical and imaginative scope of the “right to the city” as envisioned by Lefebvre [19].

Another important aspect of this business model is its emphasis on integrating and monetizing so-called ‘idle resources’ [14]. Platforms effectively remove from democratic oversight the power to define what counts as idle, by what criteria, and for what purposes and times such resources should be used. This results in the private appropriation of assets and spaces that are public or lack clearly defined property rights [20]. In doing so, platforms shift the use value of spaces—whether private (like housing) or public (such as shared areas in residential buildings, streets, sidewalks, urban infrastructure, or green spaces)—into exchange value. These spaces become productive assets that sustain an economic model which owns few resources itself but captures and exploits many public and private ones.

The material changes and practices associated with platform tourism at the geographical level are clearly substantial—examples include dark kitchens, the takeover of public spaces by delivery services and tourist-oriented terraces, the use of shared areas in residential buildings by guests, the occupation of housing and historic centers, and rising noise levels. Equally important, however (especially for the purposes of this study), are the symbolic transformations that reshape people’s sense of place, their emotional connection to space and scale, and particularly their perception of what is ‘local’ [11]. While the commodification of space, community, and local culture as sellable experiences is not new to tourism, platforms like Airbnb have assumed an increasingly complex and multidimensional role within urban capitalism, constructing and marketing new spaces as if they embodied authentic reality [21].

One of the most widespread and yet deeply rooted criticisms of the new spatialities created by the tourism platform economy concerns the shrinking supply of residential housing. The growing overlap between the real estate market and short-term rental platforms—especially in increasingly strained and financialized urban housing contexts—has widened the ‘rent gap’ [22] between housing used for permanent residence and that redirected to tourism. This often reduces access to long-term housing in terms of affordability, location, and quality [8,9,15,23], and in some cases accelerates the displacement of long-standing residents and local businesses. As a result, a growing body of research has explored how touristification intersects with the more familiar process of gentrification, noting that while they frequently overlap, they stem from different causes and produce distinct urban outcomes [23,24].

Smith [22] defines gentrification as a process of urban change marked by rising property values and the displacement of lower-income residents, driven by investment and exclusionary urban policies. In contrast, touristification refers to the reorientation of urban spaces towards the needs of tourists, frequently at the expense of local communities [23,24,25]. As stated [23], this process entails not only physical changes but also shifts in local identity, and the commodification of culture, public space, and housing, ultimately altering the community’s social fabric. While gentrification emphasizes socio-economic displacement linked to real estate dynamics, touristification highlights cultural and spatial changes driven by tourism as well. Moreover, Gil [24] further underscores the role of short-term rentals as a form of housing assetization that intensifies both gentrification and touristification, contributing to housing shortages and resident displacement. In this context, touristification can accelerate gentrification by enhancing neighborhood appeal for affluent visitors and investors, thereby driving up property values.

Also questioned is the tourism platform economy in relation to sustainability, due to declines in certain consumption patterns and a broader distribution of tourist pressure at the city-wide scale. This may in some cases be relieving pressure on the most congested areas, although critical analyses have countered that the platform tourism model is instead expanding the overall tourism bubble [8] in certain cities and transferring some of its worst effects (such as pressure on housing) to areas that had previously been spared [26].

One aspect supposedly facilitated by the platform economy is the likelihood of ‘authentic’ encounters between tourists and locals, contributing to greater integration into the host society and thus improving the tourist experience [13]. In this narrative, tourists benefit from the added authenticity and uniqueness of staying in a place where they can feel part of a local community, and here providers emphasize the importance of cultural exchanges with guests [8]. However, we find that, from the consumer perspective, this tourism model is chiefly defended through utilitarian values (cost, location, amenities, features of the accommodations)—the very attributes associated with a traditional hotel. References to the supposed ‘socialization value’ derived from interactions with hosts are rarely encountered in the discourses of guests, seemingly calling into question the claims of platforms like Airbnb that emphasize their role in promoting lasting social relationships [8].

Dredge and Gyimóthy [9] conclude that these discourses on authenticity merely seek to romanticize supposedly unmediated encounters between locals and tourists, downplaying the reality of economic exchange. This romanticization further extends to the work that supports such relationships, now conceptualized as a kind of selfless sharing supported by discourses that favor normative transformations toward deregulation and the casualization of labor [5].

This idealized image would not be possible without the deliberate use of language by platform actors and service providers in their internal narratives. On Airbnb, for instance, words like ‘tourist’, ‘consumer’, and ‘client’ are avoided in favor of ‘traveler’, ‘guest’, and ‘host’. This personalized terminology supports a postmodern, even anti-tourism discourse that emphasizes authenticity and meaningful experiences, while concealing the underlying commercial nature of the exchange [27]. Providers adopt similar discursive strategies, often describing their offerings not just in terms of functionality—location, amenities, safety—but with language that conveys warmth, cultural identity, authenticity, and the appeal of novelty in everyday settings [28].

Taking all these factors into consideration, this textual account is structured as follows. First, we discuss the methodology developed, follow by the presentation of the results divided into two parts: a first one that basically reflects the quantitative results, where the discursive competition for the ‘frame’ is revealed; and a second with a fundamentally qualitative approach, where the different discursive rationalities are analyzed. Finally, there is a discussion section where the main conclusions reached are also highlighted.

2. Materials and Methods

As an analytical method, this research uses tools from both corpus linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). While the primary analytical objective of linguistics is discourse itself, from the perspective of social sciences this can serve as a method of approximating social reality or, as in our case, certain aspects of urban socio-spatial reality.

The combination of quantitative and qualitative linguistic methods, known as Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADSs) by authors like Baker [29], typically does not begin with strong initial hypotheses. Instead, following Glasser and Strauss’ [30] Grounded Theory model, it adopts theoretical sampling, where hypothesis formation, data collection, and conclusions are not distinct stages. After an initial analysis, indicators for new concepts emerge, prompting further empirical analysis and the development of new concepts or categories [31]. Thus, this research thus brings together two seemingly opposing linguistic approaches: corpus linguistics, which is primarily empirical, quantitative, and relatively formalized; and CDA, which uses qualitative methods to explore the links between ideology, power, and/or hegemony, prioritizing critique of the status quo over how people speak [29]. The theoretical foundations and analytical approaches of both methods are discussed in detail below, in relation to our data analysis procedures.

The main advantage of this crossover lies in corpus linguistics’ ability to detect lexical patterns and language trends across large text collections, often selected through clear, reproducible criteria. This enables researchers to analyze extensive corpora without preconceived notions, addressing common criticisms of discourse analysis—such as relying on small, biased samples chosen to confirm pre-existing beliefs. Accordingly, we work with a sample not constructed to support our own conscious or unconscious biases [29]. Furthermore, since this methodology is applied within the social sciences rather than linguistics itself, the value of analyzing large volumes of text becomes evident: social impact rarely stems from a single document, but from the cumulative effect of repeated discourses that shape causality, agency, and the roles of speakers and audiences [32]. In sum, this approach balances quantitative rigor with qualitative, contextual interpretation [33], as demonstrated by numerous studies linking linguistic findings to broader social, ideological, and intellectual contexts [34], as well as to geographical and urban settings [25,26,35].

In any case, while no initial hypotheses are offered, and questions may be somewhat imprecise—going beyond what might be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ [29]—one essential starting point is common to all CDA: to “shed light on the problems that people face as a result of particular forms of social life” [32] (p. 185). Under a social and critical orientation, and here in relation to the platform economy and tourism, this would indicate that situations and processes are addressed in which relations of power and inequality are present. This implies “focusing on a social problem that has a semiotic aspect” [32] (p. 184) in which said semiosis—“understood as an irreducible part of material social processes” [32] (p. 180)—contributes to the construction of the socioeconomic reality of a city.

The research questions around which this work has been developed can be described as follows:

How has the connection between the platform economy and touristic activities been discursively represented from distinct ideological positions in shaping a social perception of the new model of the tourism platform economy within a large city, and what power relations and discursive competition do these representations articulate?

‘Touristification’ in Madrid provides the core content from which our main corpus was built. The selection of this term as a central concept was debated, as it could imply a negative view of tourism, leading some media outlets—especially economic or conservative ones—to use it sparingly, thus potentially underrepresenting them in the corpus. Nevertheless, we chose it for two reasons: theoretically, because the negative connotation has been challenged in previous studies [36,37], and others have made similar choices [38,39]; and practically, because broader terms like tourism would have produced an unmanageable number of texts, many irrelevant to our aims, making final selection nearly impossible.

The corpus was compiled through extensive searches across twelve newspapers with varied profiles, including some that originated in print and now operate in both print and digital formats, as well as others that are fully digital. The selected titles were ABC, Cinco Días, El Confidencial, El Diario, El Mundo, El País, El Salto, Expansión, InfoLibre, La Marea, Libre Mercado, and Público. Newspapers were chosen due to their influential role—not only in producing discourse but, increasingly, in shaping and reshaping readers’ discourses—despite sharing space with other mass media. These outlets have a notable cumulative impact and, depending on their nature and ideological stance, may convey both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic or resistant discourses [33].

The text search was carried out online using the keywords ‘touristification’ and ‘Madrid’. We anticipated some selection bias due to the varying quality of search engines across sources—some allowed combined searches (‘touristification + Madrid’), while others required separate queries and manual cross-checking. Searches were conducted between December 2023 and May 2024, with no restriction on article publication dates. As a result, some headings may cover slightly longer periods, depending on when each outlet began publishing or first addressing the topic.

Given the reliance on internet-based searches and the inconsistent quality of newspaper search engines, it was expected that many relevant texts might go undetected. To address this and ensure broader coverage of urban processes, the search was expanded to include articles mentioning ‘gentrification’ + Madrid alongside references to tourism, leisure, or related topics. This strategy aimed to enrich the corpus with texts not captured by the primary search terms but still highly relevant to the article’s focus, as well as to future studies using the same dataset.

Once the documents were downloaded and reviewed, those relevant to our research focus were selected and saved in PDF format. To facilitate reading and, above all, to remove metadata—such as advertisements or reader comments, which could distort quantitative results—each file was then cleaned and saved in plain text using Notepad, retaining only headlines, initial summaries, and the main body of the article.

These documents were used to build the main corpus, which was then subdivided along two lines: temporal and ideological. Chronologically, four five-year periods were defined—2006–2010, 2011–2015, 2016–2020, and 2021–2024. Although no specific starting year was imposed, the term ‘touristification’ appeared rarely before these dates. In fact, the 2006–2010 period was ultimately excluded from the diachronic analysis, as its limited number of occurrences risked distorting the results through disproportionate representation.

The second method of subdividing the corpus followed ideological lines (‘right’ and ‘left’), as well as media specialization: general versus economic press; mode of distribution (traditional print with online versions versus exclusively digital outlets); and the degree of ideological radicalism (understood without any pejorative intent). This led to the creation of several subcorpora: first, a division between left and right; then, four categories—traditional generalist, traditional economic, left-wing alternative, and neoliberal alternative. These classifications, shown in Figure 1, were based on the researchers’ assessments and supplemented by various sources detailing each outlet’s ideological stance (subject to critical review).

Dividing the main corpus into several subcorpora—whose sizes are shown in

Table 1. Distribution of the general corpus in the different subcorpora according to ideology, mode of access and radicality of the proposal.

	Traditional Generalist	Traditional Economic	Left-Wing Alternative	Neoliberal Alternative	TOTAL	Left-Wing	Right-Wing	Total
06–10	3	0	0	0	3	2	1	3
11–15	13	2	5	3	23	13	9	22
16–20	160	11	93	29	293	168	124	292
21–24	62	2	33	8	115	56	61	117
TOTAL	238	25	131	40	434	239	195	434

—enabled targeted analyses and allowed for both chronological and ideological comparisons. As Baker notes [33], this approach is appropriate when researchers, drawing on prior knowledge, consider such comparisons potentially valuable from a quantitative or qualitative standpoint. In our study, the quantitative analysis yielded notable results across most subdivisions. However, the qualitative dimension proved less productive: chronological analyses revealed no meaningful discursive shifts over time, and distinctions based on radicalism or publication format were rarely evident. Consequently, ideological interpretations rely primarily on the left–right axis.

The quantitative analyses were carried out using #LancsBox X [40], a freely accessible concordancer developed by scholars at Lancaster University. The analysis was conducted in Spanish, based on Spanish-language texts. Later, both the analytical concepts and the illustrative excerpts were translated into English. However, the titles of the newspaper articles cited as examples remain in their original Spanish. Full references for all corpus texts, including authorship and access links, are provided in the data availability statement at the end of this paper.

After exploring various options through an inductive approach, two types of quantitative analysis were ultimately selected, as they proved the most fruitful. First, drawing on specialized literature, a list was compiled of keywords commonly used in academic discourse to define and describe the platform economy [5,6,8,9,13,15,27,28,38,41,42]. The absolute and relative frequencies of these keywords (per 10,000 words) were then calculated across both the general corpus and the subcorpora. This allowed us to identify the prominence of these academically established terms within the corpus and to qualitatively explore their geographical and ideological implications—whether through their presence, absence, or relative weight. For analytical clarity, the keywords were organized into three Discourse Categories (DCs), based on their narrative significance—understood not only as linguistic expressions, but also as silences and material practices shaped through repetition and reinforced by enactment [5]. These resulting groupings, or DCs, are as follows:

• DC 1. Platform economy, grouping all those terms and their variations (including inflections of gender, number, time, noun or adjective forms, etc.) used to designate, describe, or explain the functioning of the platform economy: platform, technology, digital, collaborative, sharing, etc.
• DC 2. Actors, grouping all those terms and their variations that designate people, groups, or companies that serve as agents or patients in the platform economy discourse, and who may be for or against it: Airbnb, Uber, Homeway, investment funds, Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, neighbor, tenant, etc.
• DC 3. Changes in socioeconomic relations, grouping all those terms and descriptive variants of the changes (in the opinion of the producers of the discourses) that the platform economy is causing in social relations (host, guest), or as related to housing and the city (housing, rent, eviction).

The second quantitative analysis focused on identifying the most prominent words within each subcorpus. The objective was to pinpoint terms that show a clear statistical divergence between two corpora that potentially represent opposing discursive positions—what Baker refers to as ‘lockwords’ [29]. In essence, we aimed to detect concepts statistically overrepresented in one corpus relative to a reference corpus, highlighting how certain ideological perspectives emphasize particular themes or ideas in constructing their narratives. Given our interest in geographical, social, and ideological dynamics rather than linguistic patterns, only content words—nouns, adjectives, and verbs—were included, excluding functional elements like prepositions, conjunctions, and articles. The analysis relied on the Log Likelihood statistic provided by the software. This method has been repeatedly applied by the research group that developed it to uncover contrasting ideological stances on both social and extra-linguistic matters—such as the portrayal of Muslim immigration in the UK press, depending on the ideological leanings of the newspapers involved [43].

The second phase of our methodology involved a qualitative analysis grounded in the principles of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Central to this approach is the examination of ‘lockwords’—terms that are statistically more prominent in one subcorpus than in another. This required a close analysis of these key concepts, along with a critical reading of the texts where they appear, to understand how they shape and define a particular discourse in contrast to its counterparts. In our study, the most revealing axis of differentiation was between left-wing and right-wing discourses; accordingly, this distinction became the primary focus of our qualitative analysis.

In this way, we sought to analyze the discursive ‘frame’—in the terminology of Lakoff [44]—understood as the mental structures that shape the way humans perceive the world and understand language. Frames organize information and activate values and emotions that influence one’s way of thinking and acting. According to Lakoff [44], language activates these frames unconsciously, so that whoever controls them in public discourse (and even more, whoever has the ability to impose discursive frames on their opponents) has the power to influence perceptions and opinions.

Finally, it should be noted that—distinct from the natural sciences, which are interested in causal explanations—this method seeks to elucidate the apprehension and production of meaning [31]. In any case, these discourses must be seen as relatively ideal theoretical constructions developed from specific empirical material that are more social than individual in character [45].

3. Results

The results section has been divided into two subsections. The first reflects the quantitative results obtained from the analysis of the main terms included in each of the Discursive Categories, in order to reflect what has been called discursive competence by frame. Then, the second subsection, eminently qualitative, shows the different discursive rationalities behind each ideological construction of the tourism platform economy.

3.1. Struggling over the Discursive Frame: A Quantitative Analysis of Discursive Categories Related to the Urban Tourism Platform Economy

This section presents the quantitative results of the concepts used to define the platform economy across different narratives, which, in line with Lakoff’s theories [44], help to identify the ‘frame’ constructed by each discursive line. The analysis focuses primarily on the ideological divide between the right and the left, which is visually represented in Figure 2. These results are presented in three sections, corresponding to the discursive categories outlined in the methodology: the concepts used to define the platform economy, its key actors, and its effects on socio-economic and urban dynamics.

3.1.1. The Characterization of the Platform Economy

Turning to the first of the Discursive Categories discussed in the methodological section (linked to characterization of the platform economy itself), the concept appearing most frequently in the selected corpus is precisely platform. This is therefore the term most frequently used to describe this economic model by the actors involved and by the journalists who write the news. On the other hand, concepts with an apparently greater evaluative weight in favor of this economic model—including those that emphasize collaboration or sharing, unrelated to any economic relationship (collaborative, sharing, intermediation, share, connect, P2P, etc.)—register a relatively low presence. Similar in insignificance are concepts that focus on what constitutes technological innovation (technology, digital, automation) or organizational innovation (innovation, disruption).

Furthermore, according to the t-test, no statistically significant differences were observed in the use of any of these terms within the various subcorpora, whether in terms of the left-to-right ideological vector or in the mode of access, or in sources presenting proposals of greater or lesser orthodoxy. Thus, it might be noted that from a quantitative point of view, no clear attempts have been found among the different argumentative or discursive threads to impose a specific way of referring to this new economic model, or consequently to impose a ‘frame’ [44] that fits a specific vision of this economic model and permits its justification or rejection in discursive terms.

In any case, it does appear to be the case that, in the early days of the discursive debate around this economic model, there may have been an attempt by some (right-wing, neoliberal, economic press) in favor of the collaborative economy, proposing its acceptance as a non-conflictive socioeconomic model to establish a frame that would foster a positive view. Indeed, some of the concepts used to refer to the platform model—especially when emphasizing its technological or social innovations that encourage new relationships between equals beyond the economic (collaborative, sharing, connecting)—were much more prevalent in the early phases under analysis than has lately been the case. This shift has surely come with the emergence and progressive spread of alternative left-wing discourses, which have greatly increased the discourse around the platform economy and presented it in conflictive terms.

3.1.2. The Characterization of Actors of the Platform Economy

The second of our Discursive Categories, referring to actors, has been further divided into subcategories: (a) what Raucher [6] calls the ‘business giants’, whether related directly to the tourism sector (Airbnb, Homeway, Vrbo, Windu, Booking) or other areas of the platform economy (Uber, Cabify, Deliveroo, Idealista); (b) those who invest in the platform economy, whether investment funds (Ares, Blackstone, Azora, Cerberus, Madlyn) or Public Limited Companies for Investment in the Real Estate Market; (c) associations of platform economy entrepreneurs (Madrid Aloja, Association of Entrepreneurs of Apartments and Housing for Tourist Use, as well as other concepts referring to the same (real estate, large holder); and finally (d) associations (Platform of People Affected by Mortgages—PAH for its acronym in Spanish-, Hotel Business Association of Madrid) and unstructured groups of concerned persons who oppose the platform economy (neighbors, tenants).

Among those designated ‘business giants’, Airbnb is undoubtedly the actor most frequently featured in published discourses (17.09 per 10k words), both as a subject or agent of the processes referred to and as a patient of discourses expressed by others, present in positive, negative, and neutral assessments depending on the speaker’s discursive and ideological stance. Other ‘business giants’ have a rather limited presence in the selected corpus, with none making an appearance per 10,000 words expressed.

Furthermore, virtually no statistically significant differences are found in this Discursive Category, either in the division of the corpus along the left–right vector or in the division into traditional versus alternative modes of access and discourse. The only exception we find is in relation to the name Airbnb and its use by the left-wing alternative press, which uses the term to a lesser extent than the rest of the corpus (10.93 occurrences per 10k, compared to 17.09 instances overall, or 21.81 for the neoliberal alternative press), and this amounts to a statistically significant difference according to the t-test (p = 0.002). As will be made clear, the explanation for this may reside in the fact that the line of discourse supported by the left-wing alternative press prefers to avoid neutral proper nouns in favor of concepts that reveal the socioeconomic processes underlying the model.

This relative neutrality among the various discursive lines established for the relevant actors carries into other subdivisions of this second discursive category. That is to say, when the proper names of a company and/or association are used, both in order to give them a voice (‘emittors’) and in direct reference, no statistically significant differences are found (according to the t-test, in which each subcorpora is compared with the overall corpus minus itself), whether in the use of discourses attributed to ideologies or as relates to the greater or lesser degree of orthodoxy.

Nonetheless, this discursive neutrality around particular proper names—which carry no evaluation in and of themselves—is clearly broken when categories are established that group them together, because these categories and the way each is lexicalized tend to carry a significant ideological burden, used to highlight the linking of certain associations of ideas (preferred or not) to a specific discursive frame.

Thus, when discourses refer to investors in the platform economy model, according to the vectors specifying type of access and greater or lesser orthodoxy, we find that the category investment fund is not used equally. While no difference is detected in the division between left and right, we find that the left-wing alternative press refers to this concept much more than the corpus as a whole (1.97 versus 1.16 per 10k), the difference here being statistically significant (p = 0.03). Along the same lines but for absolutely opposite reasons, statistically significant differences (p < 0.001) are also found between the use of investment fund by the traditional economic press versus the corpus as a whole, inasmuch as the former does not refer to this category at any point. The rationale here resides in whether or not a given periodical seeks to make transparent the financial processes underlying the platform economic model and its scalar relationship between the local and the global—the very notion of an investment fund often pointing to forms of financing from abroad, with no obvious economic agent and with the ability to move capital and escape the geopolitical restrictions on which the legal and tax systems of nation states are based.

A much clearer example is the phrase vulture fund, which highlights all the aforementioned relationships but with an obviously negative connotation, thus constructing an overtly critical frame in relation to the economic model. Here we find statistically significant differences (p = 0.011) in use of the concept when considering the left (which uses it 2.30 times per 10k words) and right (only 0.05 times). We find the same statistically significant differences (in all the cases indicated hereinafter, comparison of the mentioned subcorpora against the entire corpus to which it belongs but excepting itself results in the t-test in a p value < 0.05.) when examining the division between more and less traditional discourses, both general and economic, and between alternative discourses, left as well as right. While the left-wing alternative press uses this ‘noun phrase’ 3.78 times per 10,000 words, and the general press 0.09 times, the term does not appear in either the traditional economic press or in the right-wing or neoliberal alternative press. That is to say, while the unorthodox left uses this phrase to reinforce a discourse against the platform economy, the economic left avoids it completely. This amounts to a clear example of refusing to enter the opponent’s discursive frame, even with the aim of dismantling it.

The term large holder is found to behave exactly as the concept vulture fund; this idea was described in a relatively recent law on the right to housing in Spain (Law 12/2023 of May 24) as a “natural or legal person who owns more than ten urban properties, excluding garages and storage rooms, or a constructed area of more than 1,500 m².” This context has been transferred to the short-term rental market and is now used discursively, and more or less strictly, by those who oppose urban ‘touristification’. The opposition aims to highlight how the platform model is not simply a system that connects small homeowners with those seeking services; rather, and to a great extent, it represents a market for investment and capital accumulation, taking advantage of the widest possible ‘rent gap’ [22] at the cost of withdrawing supply from traditional rental markets. In line with the frame it conveys, this phrase carefully avoided by the traditional economic press (0 per 10k), with statistically significant differences (p = 0.012) compared to the entire corpus.

Turning from those groups that invest in, participate in, and/or defend the tourism platform economy, we next consider those who oppose the same for very different reasons; here we find a similar situation, although in this case, no companies or investors are among them, as might be expected. One association urgently involved in the fight against the ‘touristification’ of the housing market (and certainly the one most frequently reflected in the corpus) is the PAH, which defines itself as “a completely free association (...) that brings together solidarity activists and people struggling to pay their mortgage or rent, or who live in a repossessed apartment and want to regularize their situation, or who are now in the process of being evicted” (https://afectadosporlahipoteca.com/que-es-la-pah/ [18 July 2024]). Having shown considerable belligerence around housing issues in recent years, this association of great public significance has been a breeding ground for rising politicians (such as Ada Colau, mayor of Barcelona between 2015 and 2023, who served as national spokesperson for the PAH for several years); it has also been involved in the fight against ‘touristification’ of the housing market and the conversion of apartments from traditional long-term use to short-term or tourist rentals.

Despite its significance, the PAH does not appear at any point in the discourse sustained by the right, with zero appearances in that subcorpora compared to 0.28 in the subcorpora reflecting leftist discourse (where the difference is statistically significant, at p = 0.012). Similarly, the PAH does not appear in the subcorpora of the traditional economic press or the neoliberal alternative press, both with equal and statistically significant differences (p = 0.012) when compared to the general corpus. Remarkably, not only does this association not appear as a subject or as an agent transmitting discourses (promoting actions against the platform economy and ‘touristification’), but it is also not even a subject in discourses that oppose its actions and initiatives. This strategy and others mentioned above present clear cases of avoiding the inclusion of essential agents into discourses; indeed, their scant appearance highlights the struggle over the object of discourse, suggesting that this field cannot be called non-conflictive.

Another significant case is that of concepts such as neighbors and tenants representing actors with no stable organization who form part of a collective with imprecise boundaries (structured or unstructured based on specific cases) as well as the perceptions of discourse creators. This subgroup’s discursive presence is very complex, insofar as these actors can be the subject, agent, object, or patient/victim of various discourses and actions issued and/or carried out by other actors. As such, these actors are difficult to extract from discourses, regardless of the ideological position being constructed.

For example, neighbor appears in the general corpus 30.03 times per 10,000 words and is represented in all the subcorpora, but with statistically significant differences in all subdivisions. In terms of ideological division, a much higher presence is found in the discourses of the left than those of the right (38.6 occurrences per 10k versus 21.96, respectively), and this represents a statistically significant difference (p < 0.001). The same is observed when considering the form of access and the greater or lesser orthodoxy of the source, with the traditional general press (23.95 per 10k) and the alternative left-wing press (47.34 per 10k) making significantly more intense use of this term than the general corpus (p = 0.007 and p < 0.001, respectively). Use by the traditional economic press (9.51 per 10k) is lower (p < 0.001) than for the general press.

The reasoning behind these findings may be that discourses in favor of the platform economy attempt to establish a sharp dividing line between economic matters and the rest of the social sphere, sustaining the former as an independent area for theorization and analysis, unrelated to broader urban processes. Thus, platforms like Airbnb might be said to generate more and more accommodation, greater variety, more income, more tourist arrivals, more consumption, and so on, but in no case should they be related to aspects like the price of housing or inconveniences caused to other residents. This is again in line with the clear de-problematization of urban tourism as a bubble, independent of other socio-spatial processes—quite a common proposal from certain economic perspectives.

Something similar is observed in terms such as tenant or affected, where there are no statistically significant differences in the right-versus-left vector, but where other vectors like method of access or relative orthodoxy of the proposal do express differences. Use of these terms in alternative left-wing discourses is significantly higher (p = 0.013 for tenant, p < 0.001 for affected), given that these media outlets frequently give voice to such groups of indeterminate definition, considering them (in terms of grammatical object or subject) to be both patients of the economic model and agents of either the opposition or alternative proposals.

Also worthy of interest is the chronology around the emergence of new actors, where those with relatively controversial connotations have been appearing in the most recent periods—especially those actors who clearly situate discussions of ‘touristification’ and the platform economy within an economic rather than a relational sphere. For example, investment funds, vulture funds, Listed Real Estate Investment Companies (SOCIMIs), large holders, or any of the proper names of companies dedicated to investment and/or real estate are not represented in the earliest period under analysis (2011–2015), never appearing in the corpus until the subsequent 2016–2020 period. In this case, it was the left-wing press and especially the segment we describe as heterodox that included these actors into the ‘frame’, thereby incorporating into the discussion the notions of large capital flows and processes of accumulation. It should be noted that large investors are now increasingly present in the city’s economic model, particularly in the real estate and tourism sectors; consequently, they are increasingly a factor in the most critical discourses.

3.1.3. The Characterization of Socio-Economic Changes Brought About by the Platform Economy

The third Discourse Category, which includes all concepts referring to changes in socioeconomic and urban relations, provided no keywords of interest to our corpus. Furthermore, of those concepts selected from the specialized literature –especially those that mention increased costs—most were found to be less than specific in terms of their relationship to the platform economy model and were therefore not subjected to further qualitative analysis.

Changes in social relations between service providers and customers—apparently reflected in the concepts of host and guest, both of which are key in the specialized literature and which (like many others) seem chosen to obscure the economic relationship underlying the model—yielded no significant results from a quantitative perspective. However, as will be clarified later, the qualitative results are indeed significant around such terms, given their very common use by apartment providers to conceptualize and categorize both themselves and the activities they perform. Perhaps the only noteworthy aspect in quantitative terms is that the left-wing alternative press uses the term host significantly less often (p = 0.011) than the corpus as a whole (0.51 occurrences per 10k, versus 1.52). Once again, this shows how certain lines of discourse tend to avoid concepts that assume the frame of their discursive opposite—in this case toward a perspective more focused on underlying economic realities than on the relational and emotional aspects publicized by the sector.

As concerns the relationship between the platform economy and housing, several keywords were detected with significant discursive presence: housing (41.27 mentions per 10k), rental (41.12), residential (12.5), accommodation (10.62), and eviction (2.53). Indeed, the plural houses was the third most frequently represented word with semantic content in the overall corpus (appearing 1109 times in total), behind only Madrid and neighborhood. The more general housing ranked tenth on the same list, behind neighbors, rental, city, and apartments, all of which might also fall within the same semantic field. In total, if we added the frequencies of housing and houses, the result would be the top word in the corpus, behind only functional words such as articles and prepositions. Despite its neutral character from a quantitative point of view, the frequent appearance of this word within a corpus collected to reflect on the touristic city is interesting indeed; the concept ranks far above any explicit references to elements that comprise this sector’s traditional production chain or the consumer experience (such as hotel, airplane, restaurant, etc). That is to say, when we speak of urban tourism and its connection to the platform economic model (or more explicitly to ‘touristification’), the commonest discourses direct us to the concept of housing, thanks to transfers between the real estate market and tourist accommodation and consequent difficulties in obtaining access.

Of all the selected keywords associated with housing, concepts related to rent and eviction are worth mentioning, with statistically significant differences found between their use in left-wing versus right-wing discourses. The word rent is overrepresented in both right-wing discourse and in the traditional economic press. In contrast, eviction is clearly overrepresented in the left-wing press (3.59 times per 10k, versus 0.95 on the right), with a statistically significant difference between the two subcorpora (p = 0.011). The word eviction also occurred much more frequently in the left-wing alternative press than in the corpus as a whole (5.13 times per 10k; p = 0.016). At the same time, the term never appears in the traditional economic press and is relatively rare in the neoliberal alternative press. Yet again, we observe here an attempt to select words that construct a favorable frame for a particular discourse while avoiding words that might draw attention to the opposing discourse by highlighting the negative social impacts of a particular economic model. The case of eviction is obvious, seen as a side effect of an extensive platform economy that fosters the transfer of housing from traditional uses to short-term tourist rentals, thus fomenting higher rental prices and the expulsion of long-term residents.

3.2. Discursive Rationalities: A Qualitative Approach to Ideological Construction of the Notion of a Tourism Platform Economy

As mentioned in the methodological section, the various ideological constructions that underline the Discursive Categories, designated ‘discursive lines’, can be examined through comparative analysis of lists of words from the several subcorporal subdivisions with the most prominent or salient lexical content. Thus, key concepts deemed essential and specific to one discourse may be compared to another. In other words, terms of great prominence (or saliency) when defining the central themes of a certain discursive line are compared to another (the idea of ‘aboutness’) in order to build an ideological construction from the two [29].

3.2.1. The Platform Economy as an Extractive Model, and the Idea of Resistance from Left-Wing Discourses

The most forceful critique of the platform-based economic model articulated from the left is not expressed through the concept of platform itself but rather conveyed through non-neutral nouns and adjectives, marked by explicit denotative and connotative critique (e.g., vulture, speculative, vampires, euthanasia), that are associated with this model. In this way, a discursive line is constructed around themes of extraction and predation to describe an economic model that creates no wealth but instead extracts it from the lower classes (workers without rights), or that transfers wealth from certain social positions (tenants) to higher ones (rentiers) or even to faceless investors (investment funds, SOCIMIs).

This line of discourse centered on extraction plays with the duality and similarity of the ‘noun phrases’ investment fund(s) and vulture fund(s), which function as near-synonyms and tend to accompany a critical perspective, used to categorize agents of deregulated capitalism intruding on various economic sectors, with significant impacts on the city. While the former concept is relatively neutral in denotation (though often used critically, surrounded by adjectives that connote as much), the latter is obviously negative and propounds a view of the platform economy as a non-productive and extractive model: “sovereign debt, housing, healthcare, and nursing homes: the favorite dishes of vulture funds in Spain (“Varios movimientos sociales lanzan la plataforma contra los fondos buitre,” La Marea, 10 April 2018). The result is an extended and controlling metaphor deployed all throughout this discursive line, with the virtue of converting an abstraction (supposedly referring to an economic model) into something tangible, emphasizing its relatively bottom-up, redistributive and non-generative character. The model evoked fits perfectly with the notion of accumulation by dispossession described by geographer D. Harvey [46,47].

The key actors in this business model are companies or groups of diverse configurations, and these generally appear in the verbal structure as subjects in active form. Airbnb is in this case most prominent, but phrases like investment fund or acronyms like SOCIMI are also found, as are public-participation institutions such as the Sociedad de Gestión de Activos Procedentes de la Reestructuración Bancaria (SAREB), along with political posts and individual politicians (mayor as well as many individual names) and relatively abstract concepts lacking obvious structures for accountability (hospitality, capitalism). The aim is clearly to avoid the construction of discourses in which decisions related to the platform economy present no obvious actors (as would constructions in the passive voice, for example) and where greater attention is paid to the results and not the agency behind them—a common strategy in discourses seeking to naturalize economic decisions issued by the political right.

This relatively critical view of the platform economy undoubtedly brings together the greatest number of words found to be very prominent within left-wing narratives. This high percentage of terms (over 15, many of them among the top 50 most salient ‘lockwords’ in this discourse) refers to the movement against ‘touristification’ as well as the platform economy and its actors (struggle, action, demonstration, protest). As regards actors, the terms of reference lexicalize either collectives with loose and shifting boundaries (neighbors, tenants, affected, collectives) or formally constituted social associations (union, Reginal Federation of Neighborhood Associatons of Madrid—FRAVM-, PAH), communicating an idea of multiparty struggle against a common enemy. This notion of collective resistance from below unites a very diverse population whose nexus is precisely their joint-interest in a space they see as under attack; most of these movements and actions are reinforced by abundant use of the adjective ‘neighborhood’.

In terms of their relationship to discourse, the most fragile groups frequently find themselves in the position of object/patient of the action. These groups are directly affected by processes such as expulsion, eviction, dislodgment, speculation, residential bullying, ‘touristification’, and gentrification, any of which are likely to transform their living spaces in social, cultural, and economic ways. This is the case of the residents referred to below:

“[People] expelled by the market and by the owners who prefer tourists with suitcases on wheels to neighbors like us—a neighborhood to be seen and not to be lived in.”

(“Lavapiés se manifiesta con ironía por los derechos de los turistas”, Público, 5 April 2017)

In addition to direct expulsion, and as evidenced by the above quotation, severe impacts occur when ‘touristification’ reaches a level beyond which customary living spaces are transformed into a space for tourists, causing serious problems for those residents who have managed to resist: from inconvenience, discomfort, and noise to the total commercialization of the urban environment—now a leisure space replete with bars and restaurants. In such cases, the discourse from the left constructs an argumentative line of resistance, taking on negative connotations in line with the first definition provided by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE): to resist, as to tolerate, endure, or suffer.

The few residents who remain are left isolated amid pub crawlers, hooligans, and bachelor parties. Touristification has been like this: a living hell in the heart of Madrid

(“Drama en el portal vivir acorralado por turistas”, Público, 4 September 2018)

Nevertheless, far from sustaining an exclusively victim-based narrative, emphasis is commonly placed on the agency of these subjects through collective action (with struggle, mobilization, demonstration, and protest among the concepts of high prominence in left-wing discourse). This has helped to organize the groups mentioned above, which are generally activated from below through “the self-organization of a good portion of the neighbors” (“El inquilinato de un bloque en el barrio de Puerta del Ángel se organiza contra el fondo buitre Vitruvio”, El Salto, 29 September 2023). In such cases, these collective subjects abandon their role as affected–as the object/patient of the discourse—to become agents of the action, constructing a variant of the aforementioned line which might be termed ‘active resistance’. Here resistance begins to acquire the meaning of ‘opposing the action of another’—an opposition that usually derives from an anonymous collective subject/agent, not limited to confrontation but which fosters a constructive and creative push toward production of the city.

[R]ecognizing my love for the hundreds of committed people who continue to build neighborhoods, resist in the streets, point out the faces of urban speculation, squat in place, and break the silence. Here and there.

(“De cómo Booking nos llevó al PSOA Malaya,” El Salto, 30 October 2017).

This narrative produces yet another very fertile line of discourse which connects with the line of active and passive resistance, insofar as it provides both with an object worth fighting for: a series of violated rights (the rights to housing, downtime, tranquility, identity, decent employment, etc.) which, when taken together, point to this economic model as an essential element in defining the new vectors of “conflict in the contemporary city” (“El conflicto en la ciudad contemporánea: entre el malestar, la exclusión y la búsqueda de la felicidad”, El País, 31 July 2023). Indeed, this narrative of violated rights is translated into broader language, sometimes with important theoretical content and a capacity for abstraction, all in defense of a program of social and environmental justice under attack by the capitalist mode of production—and not least by this most deregulated version known as the platform model: “They have understood, by force of the facts, what the deregulatory desire of current capitalism entails” (“Poder elegir—ser explotados-.Lectura amplia del conflicto del taxi”, La Marea, 2 September 2018)

In conclusion—and as could hardly be otherwise, given the urban space in which we are working—these narratives are made concrete in a complex construction aimed at defense of the right to the city. This is in line with the observations of Lefebvre [19] decades ago, whose claim has become increasingly relevant to negative processes linked to ‘touristification’ [23,48]: the right to produce the city in a material way, but above all to imagine possible and desirable urban futures as components of collective action.

[R]eclaim cities for the people, not for big capital and speculators. “We want to reclaim the right to the city, the right to build the city we live in, and the right to participate in fundamental decisions”

(“Las ciudades no se venden”: “los vecinos salen a las calles para luchar contra la burbuja del alquiler y la turistificación”, InfoLibre, 12 May 2018).

3.2.2. Right-Wing Narratives Around Debates on Sharing and the Fragility of the Host

As for the right-wing narratives, the remainder of the focus (the ‘aboutness’) of right-wing discourse sharply contrasts with the discourse expressed from leftist positions and the perspective of a citizen suffering the effects of this economic model. Confronted by a leitmotif based on mobilization, its actors, and their rights, the conservative press predictably constructs a narrative based on expert language and rationality, with an abundance of economic terms among the most prominent (portfolio, prices, supply, demand, client, competition, rates, price, profitability, brand, growth). This narrative relies on and employs individuals, business leaders (director, chief executive officer—CEO), and economic institutions considered solvent as both transmitters and subjects of verbal structures; it is rich in quantitative data, anglicisms, and neologisms as essential supports for its arguments and as tactics for persuasion. This is the discursive strategy that Baker [29], calls a ‘hierarchy of credibility’, which in this case works not through accumulation (as with left-wing speeches) but through the individual power granted to its emitters via (supposed) prestige.

“We work with a revenue strategy that optimizes all prices, providing the owner with the desired occupancy rate and, therefore, the expected profitability,” explains CEO Daniel Hermoso. Compared to traditional rentals, this profitability ranges between 8% and 10%. “It depends on the size and location, but considering the prime area of Madrid, it can range between €3,000 and €5,000.”

(“El desafío de los pisos turísticos”, 19 May 2017)

Another significant difference with left-wing speeches is that for the right-wing press the term platform is more frequently used in this group of texts, though it does not rank among the top 100 most prominent words. Nonetheless, to delve deeper into the analysis of this business model through right-wing discourse, it is interesting to consider another phrase often used in specialized literature as a synonym or descriptor, namely that of the collaborative economy. From a quantitative perspective, it must be noted that the concept of collaboration does not appear significantly more often in right-wing discourse than in left-wing discourse (1.37 times per 10k, versus 1.24); in both cases, a similar dispersion is observed across the set of texts. However, while this phrase in left-wing discourse always connotes as a euphemism that effectively obscures a predatory economic model, in right-wing narratives a more substantive discussion has opened around the reality and scope of this phenomenon, mounting a confrontation of the very notion of collaboration (by no means resolved) within conservative and right-wing discourses.

Remarkably, it is noteworthy how one of the most frequently voiced critiques of this model from the left—namely, that it lacks any genuinely collaborative dimension and instead serves as a vehicle for the deregulation of the tourism market and the ‘casualization’ of labor, driven by large investment capital—finds significant resonance within conservative and economically oriented narratives. Here the issuer of such narratives is the hotel industry and its various associations and lobby groups, which have experienced marked competition from the advent of private accommodation marketed through online platforms.

When we speak of tourist accommodation, we refer not to an elderly woman who needs to rent a room in her house just to make ends meet. Such cases are exceptional. Instead we refer to large property owners and the companies that manage them.

(“Madrid tiene más de 8.000 apartamentos turísticos ‘piratas”, El Mundo, 7 July 2015)

This debate over what truly constitutes sharing in relation to tourism and how such activity ought to be regulated has a quantitative aspect based on factors such as the permitted length of time for rentals, or whether the host (in Airbnb’s terminology) resides in the same house as the rented room. This quantifiable assessment of sharing has been defended at various levels of government, and by certain operators seeking to establish regulatory regimes, while other actors including platform companies (particularly Airbnb) and individual landlords (and their associations) have countered by promoting an emotional and even empathic line of discourse that radically departs from the hard rationality usually associated with economic speech. Here the focus is on individual freedom, equated with the freedom to operate in the market; rather than appealing to rationality and profitability, these narratives highlight the vulnerability of accommodation owners to the same urban processes mentioned in the left’s narrative line of violated rights.

[T]hey argue that these are individuals whose rights might be restricted by the actions of public authorities. “We are a group of hosts (…) from Madrid, alarmed at the possibility of being prohibited from sharing our homes (…). If the number of days we can rent rooms is limited, many of us will end up on the street, unable to pay our rent or mortgages”

(“Campaña de Airbnb contra Carmena y la Comunidad de Madrid para defender el alquiler turístico”, El Mundo, 30 July 2018)

In contrast with the actors indicated by left-wing narratives, the emotional discourse of the right underlines the individuality and isolation of the property investor in the face of regulatory impulses by the left (although the conservative Partido Popular (PP), governing Madrid at the time of writing, is also accused) and certain influential players like the hotel lobby.

The typical host is 42 years old, middle class, and earns an extra income of €3,300 by renting their home around 36 nights per year (…), according to the company’s data. Specifically, hosts in Madrid earned an average of €3,640 in 2016, and 46% say they share their home to make ends meet (…). It seems that (…) politicians—including those from the PP—and large hotel chains are particularly bothered by the fact that ordinary people who own an apartment can earn a little extra money by hosting visitors, despite it being their own property

(“Antonio Maestre y el cuento de la turistificación”, Libre Mercado. 04.08.17)

In this defense of unrestricted free markets at their most neoliberal (as evidenced by the name of the newspaper of the last quote), the Airbnb host acquires the mythical stature of Robinson Crusoe: confronted by adversity (in this case, the need to ‘make ends meet’), an isolated human exercises his natural rights—which Defoe derived from Locke—including freedom of economic action, the defense of private property, and the right to trade goods without restriction [49].

This discourse on the vulnerability of the host emphasizes economic need as the driving force of the individual operator: “According to Airbnb, 47% of its hosts use the income they earn to make ends meet” (“Madrid destinará lo recaudado con Airbnb a reforzar la inspección”, El Confidencial, 12 October 2018). However, when it comes to addressing the supplier-client relationship, the narrative mutates in order to obscure a strictly economic motivation, less than evident among the objectives pursued by subjects who are agents of the action. On the contrary, and again in emotional language, ideas of collaboration, sharing, experience, communication, and empathy (not self-directed, as in the previous line, but toward clients who require their services) take on greater relevance than any sort of commercial relationship. In short, beyond the standardization of the traditional tourism model, it is the noble vocation of service that opens visitors to new urban experiences:

We are neighbors in a strange city, people you can trust who open the doors of the local P2P community: the most direct experience anyone can have in a city. (…) [W]e are autonomous and empowered citizens, ready to connect with travelers who want to experience Madrid in a different way”

(“La hora de los superanfitriones”, El Mundo, 30 May 2015)

It is interesting to note how a business model that moves hundreds of millions of euros through the city of Madrid can construct a line of argument seeking to hide the essence of its activity: the exchange of accommodation services for financial compensation. Above all, this discursive line hopes to conceal the institutional and financial infrastructure that currently underlies the economic model of the tourism platform.

Here it becomes useful to discuss Airbnb’s nominalized strategy to avoid all references that connect it to commodification, referring to the parties involved not as business and customer, nor as entrepreneur and client, but as host and guest. From a quantitative perspective, neither of these concepts are very common in our corpus (1.52 instances for host and 3.31 for guest per 10,000 words) compared with other terms related to tourism platforms. And yet both are much more common than in any other discourse constructed around tourism with the aim of persuasion, as derived from an analysis of works by Manca [50].

The concept of host is widely used by accommodation providers to refer to themselves as subjects/agents, indicating that their work and their relationship with tourists goes well beyond the commercial: “[W]hen you’re a host, you don’t just hand over the keys.” (“Los anfitriones se rebelan”: “Pago mi hipoteca gracias a Airbnb y ahora Madrid lo prohibirá”, El Confidencial, 6 August 2018). The term is also used throughout the entire platform economy system in statements and in contacts with public authorities, as well as by media classified as right-wing. Far from being a neutral concept, this term is clearly marked from a discursive perspective, and its inclusion indicates that the constructed narrative line must be seen as eminently partisan.

Also of interest is the way in which this discursive strategy around collaboration is found not only in left-wing narratives (which frequently refer to accommodation providers with ironic terms like so-called hosts or fake hosts) but also in certain discourses of a distinctly liberal nature. In such cases, the duplicity of the discourse is revealed, where the host’s vulnerability (their economic need) is contrasted with the opposite concept of selfless collaboration, clarifying that tourism platforms are, in fact, profit-seeking enterprises: “Airbnb started well, but—oh capitalist perversity!—it has degenerated into a business. A company setting up a business? Where will we end up next?!” (“No al turismo: el centro para pijos y gafapastas”, Libre Mercado, 18 April 2017).

The truth is that many emittors of the most neoliberal discourses claim a discursive position that might be described as ‘heretical’, in the way Bourdieu [51] uses that concept. That is to say, where a speaker from a supposedly marginal position dares to say clearly what must be said, in order to produce an ostensibly new breed of common sense. This assumption hides the fact that such neoliberal discourse is plainly hegemonic within the set of economic narratives.

4. Discussion: Housing, Platforms and Tourism in the New Class Division of Urban Societies

As previously noted, this research adopts the premises of CDA, starting from the inequalities and power imbalances existing in society [52]. Therefore, our primary focus has been the (critically assessed) transformations that urban ‘touristification’ is generally causing [23,24,25,53], and more specifically the introduction and consolidation of the platform economic model within the urban tourism sector [5,9,11,16,18]. This among other aspects has led to a progressive concentration of property ownership along with accelerated financialization of various urban sectors [24,54,55], especially the real estate stock [16,24], some of which has been incorporated into the short-term tourist rental market or else commercialized as mass-use urban resources of touristic value. This entails both the worsening of problems around access to housing—already significant in many large cities—and deterioration in the quality of urban life thanks to the incompatibility between mass/unregulated tourism and the ordinary use of the spaces by citizens pursuing ordinary lives [11,18].

The differences in perspectives between the left and the right that have been observed (and much more markedly, between the alternative left and right) provokes an interesting discussion around how housing (or rather, the ownership or lack of housing) and its relationship with the (tourism) platform economy is creating a new division within urban societies, sometimes surpassing or overlapping traditional stratifications into social classes [56,57]. Indeed, the main conflict within these discourses is not structured around social class—defined in relation to employment and income, to the extent that references to categories like upper, middle, and lower class (or any equivalent) are not detected as predominant—but instead around the separation between those who do not own housing (and are therefore compelled to rent) and individuals who possess ownership of one or more residential properties (and are thus potential recipients of rental income).

This fits with an interpretation that the logic of inequality has been reconfigured since the 2008 financial crisis, which in Spain and Madrid was chiefly regarded as a crisis linked to markets and real estate. In this proposal, inequality is no longer defined by employment status (or by education, or any similar logic referring to income earned through work) but instead by the ability to participate in the asset economy—that is, through the possession of assets that appreciate more quickly than wages and inflation, and through the ability to use such assets (for their profitability, or as collateral for debt) in order to acquire more assets [56].

This asset-based economy, as discursively presented from a neoliberal perspective, and clearly within our corpus, would not solely be a project of the elites, at least in theory. Indeed, participation would be ostensibly possible (in fact or in theory) from diverse positions, to the extent that among all owners of real estate assets, distinctions could be made between investors, full and direct owners, and owners with mortgages [57]. It is this last group in particular that is most clearly reflected in our corpus from the perspective of the right-wing discourses (even though, in the end, they constitute merely a small fraction of the overall supply of tourist apartments in Madrid) by way of the emotional neoliberal discourse in favor of the platform economy, through deceptive proposals that all households can conceivably participate in the financialized asset economy [56].

More or less consciously, the discourses on the urban tourism platform economy included in our corpus embrace these new categories of social division established by the asset economy. This novel social construction implies differentiated representations that entail the need to make and break traditional groups and their collective actions in order to transform the social reality according to new interests [51]. In fact, discourses romanticizing the platform model seek to overcome the class divisions inherited from Marxism and social democracy, where the result would be a new division between persons willing to mobilize resources to generate new value (economic, at least) versus those who oppose that process. Furthermore, the notion of ‘idle resources’ [14] would seem to open an unlimited field of intervention to anyone willing to mobilize any sorts of assets, including common ones, thereby reconfiguring the traditional neoliberal idea of meritocracy. This feeds the narrative that anyone can now become part of the asset economy, whether via debt or through ownership of a widely used asset such as housing [56], valuable in most urban Western societies and specifically in Madrid. The intended conclusion is that to oppose the tourism platform model would be to deny ourselves the possibility of someday joining those who already obtain income from property, which in a virtuous cycle (via profits and debt financed with prior assets) would permit the future acquisition of additional assets.

As indicted by Fairclough [32], the new model of neoliberal capitalism demands a reconfiguration of the network of social practices, and in this case a specific restructuring of relations between economic and non-economic fields, amounting to a clear colonization of the latter by the former [32,58]. What these ideas strive to highlight is that much of the discursive construction favoring the platform economy goes far beyond trying to defend a particular model of tourist production. In fact, neoliberal ideology constructs discourses on the city and urban development that not only defend, legitimize, and justify specific policies, but also render any alternative unthinkable [59]. In reality, it seeks to construct an entirely new cultural order that, through these and other discursive spheres, restructures social and urban practices around ideas related to autonomy or individuality. In the discourse of capitalism, this will serve to abolish any strategies related to social solidarity and collective responsibility [60]. As Cockayne [4] suggests, a new affective geography of neoliberalism can emerge through the interrelation of social and discursive practices.

5. Conclusions

The research question aimed to explore whether competing ideological perspectives engaged in discursive contestation over how the platform tourism economy model was narratively represented. The results obtained by analysis allow us to present two drastically different discourses on the representation through media reporting of the tourism platform economy. The first, which can be described as hegemonic, insofar as it embraces the principles of free market and deregulation that are already clearly predominant within most common economic narratives, here favoring tourism in general and the platform economy in particular. The second, described in terms of resistance, opposes the neoliberal economic system and, accordingly, the socio-spatial model derived from ‘platformization’ of the urban tourism economy. The so-called hegemonic discourse assumes two differentiated ramifications in terms of narrative strategies, coinciding with the two modalities identified by Bourdieu [51] as dominant discourses once a discursive unanimity based on supposed social consensus has failed: the classic or impartial narrative, and the heretical narrative. In any case, it should be noted that although a clear division between two opposing discursive positions is evident—and it can be argued that narratives surrounding the platform tourism economy are more polarized than those related to urban tourism in general—intermediate positions can also be identified, ranging from full legitimization to critical narratives, as has been observed in other Spanish cities, such as Barcelona [61].

As might be expected, these two narrative lines of resistance and hegemony frame and ground their rationalities in the social and economic orders, respectively, and they employ different discursive strategies to achieve their ends. Thus, the narrative of resistance often takes up strategies of collectivization (neighbor is the keyword here, in all its grammatical variations and inflections) in order to broaden the scope of those affected to wider social spectra, ranging beyond any traditional class divisions. The hegemonic narrative often employs a strategy of functionalization, using proper names and especially professional positions of economic prestige (i.e., CEO) and arguing from a position of power and authority, to lend gravity and deductive weight to its assertions or ideas [62].

However, as we have shown, both cases present a discursive line that can be described as emotional and that seeks to empathetically connect the recipient with someone suffering an unjust situation. But while the left and right align on the narrative line (emotion), what clearly differs are the concepts employed and the semantic scope they open up. From the left, this strategy pointedly addresses the person of the tenant, understood as an urban dweller (a neighbor, identified as part of potentially affected group) who does not own the home they live in, which makes them vulnerable to certain negative material processes within the semantic fields of expulsion or eviction. In contrast, in the narrative of the right, the strategy points to groups that define themselves expressly through home ownership (owner, buyer), going so far as to obtain benefits based on their property’s exchange value (landlord). In this case, concepts are used indicating that these owners are people (or families) whose primary interest in the property is its value for use, the exchange value being secondary and/or accidental, or even obligatory; no mention is made of business conglomerates interested in investment, or in the function of housing as a means for capital accumulation.

Finally, it is important to acknowledge the main limitations of this research, which—within the framework of an urban studies agenda focused on processes of touristification and the platform economy—may also be interpreted as productive directions for future investigation. A first step would involve broadening the scope of case studies along two approximately parallel yet interconnected trajectories: on the one hand, expanding the comparative range of urban contexts in order to assess whether the empirically observed discursive competition also emerges in other city models; and on the other, extending the analysis to additional sectors of the platform economy, particularly those related to urban mobility and last-mile delivery services. Moreover, it would be valuable to incorporate alternative forms of discourse, or rather, diverse channels through which such discourses circulate—such as social media platforms or political rhetoric—thus moving beyond traditional media representations.

By integrating these lines of inquiry, it becomes possible to construct a more comprehensive understanding of the discursive logics—and their embedded power relations—that both sustain and contest platform urbanism, ultimately shaping its perception and legitimacy in a broad arrange of different urban imaginaries and, consequently, in the social life of the inhabitants of those cities.