Reaching audiences through travel vlogs: The perspective of involvement

Abstract

Travel vlogs are popular, but how audiences get involved while watching remains unclear. This study explored audience involvement along with expressions of travel intention. A systematic sampling procedure was developed, filtering 132 ‘highly involving sessions’ from 25 videos in Bilibili, a Chinese video-sharing platform. Qualitative analyses were applied, and the findings were threefold. Firstly, a five-category video content typology was highlighted, including frame aesthetics, video editing, fandom, humour, and tourist experiences. Secondly, bullet comments were deconstructed into six dimensions through examining concepts of ‘audience involvement’. Lastly, to address possible patterns of travel intention linked to the video content types, three propositions were made. This work serves as an exploration of audience involvement in the travel vlog phenomenon, an elaboration of travel intention expression in this context, and a method of assessing tourist-generated videos through bullet comments. Practical implications were discussed.

Introduction

Vlog, a visual variant of blog, has gained popularity among users, and scholarly attention across multiple fields (Ladhari, Massa, & Skandrani, 2020; Lee & Watkins, 2016; Snelson, 2013). Travel vlogs refer to tourist-generated videos that can be publicly viewed online, often through social media sites; these videos usually represent the creators’ travelling experience. Some like Peralta (2019) suggested that vlogs are contributing to a shift of tourist visual self-representations and the circulation of popular travel content. Studying this phenomenon is of both theoretical and pragmatic importance, constructing knowledge and practical guidelines of video-based tourist information sharing and exchange.

Research on travel vlogs, especially those which study vlog audiences offer implications. The work of Cheng, Wei, and Zhang (2020), by applying the concept of customer engagement, suggested that travel vlogs can function as word-of-mouth to stimulate travel intention of viewers. Four factors, encompassing source credibility, inspiration, escapism and self-congruence, can exert a positive impact. A limitation of their work is that it lacks clear connections between audience reactions and video content; it remains unclear of what video content triggers positive perceptions of the presented destinations and stimulates travel intentions. This current study seeks to fill the research gap.

Relevant to travel vlogs, the term tourist-generated videos refers to a relatively well-researched filed. Conceptually, travel vlogs are a type of tourist-generated videos. There have been some attempts that investigated tourist-generated videos (Cheng et al., 2020; Dinhopl & Gretzel, 2016; Peralta, 2019; Stankov, Kennell, Morrison, & Vujičić, 2019; Tussyadiah & Fesenmaier, 2009), but these attempts did not always include travel vlogs. Considering the utility of travel vlogs as a source for tourist promotion and information, as well as vlogs being a popular practice that tourists engage with, the vlog phenomenon is worth exploring.

The present study analysed naturalistic data (travel vlog videos and comments) where we adopted the concept of ‘audience involvement’. Audience involvement is a core concept in communication and media studies, indicating the multidimensional participation with media of viewers and their personae (Rubin & Perse, 1987). The concept of audience involvement encompasses the immediate relevance of audience viewing and responding, as it determines the data as a reflection of media-audience relations, in this case vlog-viewer relations, rather than relations between firms and their customers. Examining audience involvement can benefit research by expanding our understanding of the patterns of viewer participation, and may help explain the individual variations of cognitive, affective, and behavioural responses. Our objectives were to develop a typology for travel vlogs content, and a methodological insight gained through the bullet-comment system. The system displays audience comments in real-time while watching (Yang, 2019). The expected practical outcomes emphasise expanding the role of tourist-generated videos in peer tourist communication and destination promotions.

An important concept developed within investigation is that of ‘highly involving sessions’ – video clips in a vlog where bullet comments are intensive. A larger number of real-time bullet comments indicates a higher level of active engagement by the viewer with the video content while watching a vlog.

This study was guided by three research questions.

• What types of video content are presented in these highly involving sessions?

• What types of audience involvement can be observed within the bullet comments of these highly involving sessions?

• How does audience involvement link to various types of video content? How can these patterns of involvement and interaction contribute to the expression of travel intention from watching vlogs?

This study proceeds as follows. Section 2 poses as an overview of the literature into travel vlogs, online comments in video-sharing platforms and the theoretical base of audience involvement. Section 3 delineates the research methodology, particularly on how to collect and analyse naturalistic data of travel vlogs. Section 4 presents the findings in the sequence of the three research questions. Section 5 presents the discussions and the conclusions.