Official Tourism Websites

Official Tourism Websites: A Discourse Analysis Perspective investigates the construction and promotion of identity of tourist locales by the designers of the official websites for destinations such as Santiago de Compostela Spain; the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia; New Orleans Louisiana and Gary Indiana; Myanmar/Burma; US Sports Halls of Fame; and in recognizing the influence and popularity of such sites three websites parodying the imaginary nations of Phaic Tan Molvania and San Sombrero. Analysis addresses how tourism websites foster social action and therefore contribute to the (re)construction of nations and other communities by variably fostering re-imagination rebirth renaissance promotion and caution and patriotism. Recognizing that tourism texts can function to both construct and embody identity for their respective locales this investigation employs critical discourse analysis multimodal discourse analysis and visual semiotic analysis in the investigation of web texts and images.