Trish Coll | The co-construction of narrative: understanding the responsible tourist’s contribution to storytelling

Supervisors: Professor Emma Wood and Dr Davina Stanford

Trish is a Senior Lecturer and part-time PhD student in the Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Management.

My PhD investigates the co-construction and framing of responsible tourism narratives, through lived experiences and personal stories, written and shared online by award-winning independent travel bloggers. Aligning with a consumer-generated, social strategy model, I intend to analyse the content of online blogs as a co-created dynamic of tourism communications, involving travellers and tourists as storytelling actors within an online community. Responsible tourism stories shared by fellow tourists are now perceived to be more authentic, legitimate, and credible as an information source than traditionally framed, branded tourism marketing communications. However, a dearth of social enquiry has led to a lack of understanding about framing effective responsible tourism storytelling narratives. My intention is to harness best practice within a framework designed for tourism marketers to model future responsible tourism advocacy campaigns towards improving tourist behaviours and enhancing visitor and host experiences.