Chapter 1: Tourism Social Media: A New Research Agenda

Advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) have brought unprecedented opportunities and challenges to tourism as an information-intensive industry. Currently the Internet is evolving into a web of increasingly interactive communication platforms, which is once again transforming the virtual landscape of tourism. The emerging “Web 2.0” is claimed to be more participatory and inclusive, as it allows users to create, publish, and comment on digitized content worldwide. It provides a new generation of technological tools, enabling users to develop online communities and networks by collaborating and distributing Internet content and customizing applications (Vickery & Wunsch-Vincent, 2007). Web 2.0 is inherently collective; it is no longer just an informational medium, but a technology that nurtures, augments, and modifies social interactions and communication (Weinberg, 2009). As such, the information age has gradually become the social age.