At the start of this study abroad experience, my former roommates and I created an Instagram page. We thought it would be a fun way to keep in contact with each other and share photos with our family and friends. I am not the type of person who usually posts on social media, but do take a lot of photographs of everything I find interesting which is why during our time in Uzbekistan, I ended up with around two and a half thousand photos spanning nine days and five cities. When it came time to post pictures of the trip on our Instagram page, however, I used less than five percent of my photos to make a total of fourteen posts. There was a difference between the thousands of photos I wanted to keep on my phone and the kind of story I wanted to show everyone back home through our page. A story that included imitating the leaning towers of Samarkand, sweating (but smiling) in the desert, and trying to kiss camels.
My thoughts when posting weren’t about the specific places in Uzbekistan I wanted to highlight, but which pictures were able to convey the fun we had that day and the cool adventures we were embarking on. It wasn’t until I read Fayzullaev, Cassel, and Brandt’s study on destination images in Uzbekistan that I realized what I chose to post could have broader implications when applied to how a foreign audience (aka my family back home) would view the country’s tourism potential. The authors differentiate the idea of a destination image – how images projected by a country are perceived by others to create a “tourist landscape” (Fayzullaev, et al. 2021, 448) – with an online destination image which is more fluid. These images are formed through user-generated content, which is generated when people use the internet to talk about their experiences and opinions related to a certain tourist destination. This differs from a traditional destination image where the reasons for why the country is a desirable tourist destination are projected by the country itself. In contrast, online destination images are experiences and photographs that are shared and reproduced across the internet and social media platforms, thus having a broader reach with more diverse content. While I don’t expect this photo of me in a traditional Uzbek hat to spread all over the internet, it is still out there for all the world to access and share.
The researchers compiled data using Instagram posts like mine from Uzbekistan and sorted the photographs into three major categories: Heritage/Sightseeing, Nature/People, and Entertainment/Recreation. I took it upon myself to look at my own Instagram posts and place my photos into the same categories in order to see if my online destination images corresponded with these categories.
Overall, my results did not match. The amount of photos in the Entertainment/Recreation category increased from 10% in the study to 28% as over a quarter of my pictures were from our plane rides or in our hotels, in order to share the travel aspect of the trip as opposed to the Heritage/Sightseeing part which made up 52%. This category actually went down from the study’s 71% most likely because we spent a few days out in the desert climbing around on ancient fortresses and giving the Nature/People category a total of 20% – a 10% decrease from the study. When these categories and statistics are combined, they form the online destination image of Uzbekistan that I created through my posts, but they don’t correspond with any of the data from the study.
While assigning my own photos to the three categories, I found that some of them could have fit more than one category. These groupings are so broad that the study’s claims about what view online destination images are projecting about tourism in Uzbekistan are generalized. There is also a gray area in terms of how the person posting and the people looking at the images perceive them in terms of what categories best fit the photo. For example, while I might have posted the photo below to show people an interesting sightseeing experience, someone could focus on the desert and surrounding nature instead of the architecture of the ancient city.
The pictures I posted do, however, correspond to the study’s finding that a majority of the places that Uzbekistan and tourists in general are emphasizing are from the pre-Soviet era, specifically places that were a part of the Silk Road. Our tours consisted of ancient cities, long since turned into tourist traps, with hundreds of people milling through the centuries-old mosques and fortresses, looking for the perfect photo to put on Instagram.
Overall, I believe that the way Uzbekistan’s online destination image is formed goes beyond the categories of the study. In my posts, I wanted to highlight our experiences against the backdrop of Uzbekistan’s beautiful landscape and architecture. I hope the people who look at the photos are able to see our excitement and be a part of our journey. Those pictures represent how our group experienced Uzbekistan, and while they do project a positive destination image, the photos still serve the purpose of documenting our travels across the country and the memories we made along the way.
References:
Fayzullaev, Kamoliddin, Susanna Heldt Cassel, and Daniel Brandt. 2021. “Destination Image in Uzbekistan – Heritage of the Silk Road and Nature Experience as the Core of an Evolving Post Soviet Identity.” The Service Industries Journal 41 (7–8): 446–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2018.1519551.
