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Exploring the relation between festivals and host cities on Twitter: a study on the impacts of Lucca Comics & Games

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Abstract

This article investigates the relation between festivals and their destination cities. We examine what festival attendees think about the festival experience and the host city, and how the online image of the host city is shaped through the dissemination of these opinions on Twitter. We conduct a case study and analyze the opinions about a big scale event, Lucca Comics & Games and its host city, Lucca. Our results indicate that the festival significantly reinforces the online image of the host city on social media and not only promotes the existing strong characteristics of the city, such as historic monuments and architectural elements, but also enriches the portrayal of the city by relating the existing legacy to the fantasy culture with the festival experience. This study sheds light on the social aspects of emergent digital information practices and platforms within the context of festivals. Furthermore, our methodological framework serves as a model for prospective research on the relationship between events and cities and contributes to the development of a common methodological framework for the empirical assessment of this relation.

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Notes

  1. For a detailed analysis of the history and management of Lucca Comics & Games, see Tonga Uriarte et al. (2019a).

  2. These are the thematic areas where there are dedicated booths and activities in line with the theme. For instance, in the junior area, there are publishers of illustrated children books and comics as well as activities for children and families.

  3. According to the most recent estimates, the last edition of the festival, in 2019, has been confirmed as the largest and most important cross-media show in the West. About 270,000 ticketing admissions, plus hundreds of thousands of extra tickets’. Source (in Italian): https://www.luccacomicsandgames.com/it/2019/news/grazie-a-tutti/.

  4. Source: The Washington Post, online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/02/07/twitter-reveals-its-daily-active-user-numbers-first-time/?noredirect=on (accessed September 18, 2019).

  5. https://blog.travelappeal.com/learning-centre/improve-your-destinations-reputation.

  6. Travel Appeal customized report: In Wine we Trust! How is wine spoken about online?

  7. Travel appeal customized report: Italian Cultural Sites: Reviews and Visitor Satisfaction.

  8. Also see Sharif and Mura (2019) for the impact of user-generated content on visiting attitudes and destination perception.

  9. https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/filter-realtime/api-reference/post-statuses-filter.

  10. https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/sample-realtime/overview/GET_statuse_sample.

  11. The list of influencers was publicly available, e.g., on the festival website.

  12. We found the negative comments to be a negligible percentage over the whole number of comments by the artists.

  13. https://summer-festival.com/.

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Author notes

  1. Yesim Tonga Uriarte and Marinella Petrocchi contributed equally to this manuscript.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Piazza San Francesco 19, 55100, Lucca, Italy

    Yesim Tonga Uriarte, Maria Luisa Catoni & Rocco De Nicola

  2. Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT), National Research Council, Via Giuseppe Moruzzi 1, 56124, Pisa, Italy

    Marinella Petrocchi, Stefano Cresci & Maurizio Tesconi

  3. Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz–Max-Planck-Institut, Via Giuseppe Giusti, 44, 50121, Firenze, Italy

    Rafael Brundo Uriarte

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  1. Yesim Tonga Uriarte
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  2. Marinella Petrocchi
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  3. Maria Luisa Catoni
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Tonga Uriarte, Y., Petrocchi, M., Catoni, M.L. et al. Exploring the relation between festivals and host cities on Twitter: a study on the impacts of Lucca Comics & Games. Inf Technol Tourism 22, 625–648 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-020-00185-z

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