| Author: | Chi, Yidan |
| Title: | Exploring social experiences afforded by tourism live streaming |
| Advisors: | Wang, Dang (SHTM) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2024 |
| Subject: | Tourism Live streaming -- Social aspects Social media Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | School of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | 184 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Recent advances in information technology, particularly live streaming, have greatly influenced participants’ digital social experiences. Live streaming has been incorporated into tourism services to enable real-time stakeholder interaction. This phenomenon is known as TLS. During TLS, viewers can visit destinations virtually and connect with others outside their own social circles. These activities inform viewers’ experiences as well as their intentions to keep using the platform and make future decisions. TLS’s popularity in tourism and hospitality is growing due to its capacity to connect with potential consumers. However, relatively little is known about the social experiences that TLS facilitates. Most of the research on media and tourism has addressed real-time product sharing and promotion from business and marketing angles when investigating travel products online. This transactional stance assumes that viewers participate in TLS chiefly for commercial purposes instead of using it as a social space. Some scholars have nonetheless acknowledged TLS’s technological affordances for participants’ social actions. Viewers and live streamers can use TLS’s technological features to interact. Doing so may foster emotional involvement, relationships, parasocial activities, and feelings of community belonging. TLS enables a socio-technical environment that empowers participants’ interactions and experiences. However, few studies have specified the digital social experiences that TLS offers. Socialization is crucial for users’ experiences and digital decision-making processes. Additional investigations are thus needed to determine the digital social experiences in which viewers engage within this innovative synchronous social media setting. Thesis aims to explore the social experiences enabled by TLS, a pioneering platform in synchronous social media. This study concentrates on TLS’s ability to enable real-time communication. Three sub-questions apply: (1) What do TLS viewers discuss during social interactions? (2) How do viewers’ emotions change when interacting with other TLS participants, and are there specific topics that trigger emotional connections with others? (3) How do TLS viewers interpret their experiences when interacting with live streamers and other viewers? Several objectives guide this effort: (1) to identify conversational topics presented in TLS; (2) to examine viewers’ emotional contagion patterns along with TLS live streamers and viewer groups and to discern topics that spur emotional contagion in TLS communities; and (3) to explore viewers’ perceived meanings when engaging in real-time interaction. This thesis took critical realism as a paradigm to answer the research questions. A multi-method design comprising three studies was adopted to examine TLS-enabled socialization. Study 1 relied on sociomateriality theory to analyze 400 TLS sessions, identifying six topics of conversation in users’ interactions. Different topics explained viewers’ social freedom and situated TLS as a social space for numerous tasks beyond business. Drawing upon interaction ritual theory, Study 2 scrutinized emotional contagion based on viewers’ emotional interactions using SnowNLP and DTW analysis. Viewers, fellow viewers, and live streamers jointly influenced each other’s emotions. Localized DTW and BERTopic were applied in Study 2 to pinpoint emotionally contagious topics that spurred mutual emotional interactions between streamers and viewers. In Study 3, 40 TLS viewers were interviewed to explore viewers’ interpretations of their social experiences. The perceived meanings of TLS-induced social experiences exemplified the diversity, intensity, adjustment, and self-rewarding attributes of these real-time interactions. Taken together, this set of studies explained the social experiences afforded by TLS. We found that viewers interacted with other participants through a suite of conversational approaches. Audience members’ emotional contagion also affected their interactions. Viewers had immersive, multi-purpose, active, dynamic, ephemeral, and self-rewarding experiences during TLS. Social interaction appeared lively and fulfilling for all parties, pointing to interactive relationships among streamers, viewers, and co-viewers. Guided by sociomateriality lens, this thesis highlights the entanglements between technology and social practices in shaping viewers’ interactions and experiences. It complements conventional technology adoption theories by examining the usage process of TLS. Additionally, the thesis challenges transaction-focused perspectives on TLS and emphasizes its potential impact on social experiences. By suggesting a new ontological perspective regarding digital interactions, the findings present that online social experiences afforded by TLS are more than just an information exchange format but also play a fluid socially constructed landscape within social media spaces. These spaces represent the social projection of individual’s daily lives into the virtual world. Moreover, resultant practical insights convey how TLS can be used in everyday life and its value for multiple parties (i.e., online influencers, platform operators, destination managers). |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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