Tourists, terrorism and the media
This studentship has been awarded to Gregory Kapuscinski.
Project Title: Tourists, terrorism and the media
First supervisor: Professor Barry Richards (The Media School)
Additional supervisors: Dr Yeganeh Morakabati and Professor John Fletcher
This project examines the relationship between terrorism and tourists to identify and understand tourists' perceptions of terrorist threats according to differences in the motivations and characteristics of different tourist types. Does terrorism pose more threat to tourists who travel to understand other nations and cultures (i.e. tourism as a force for global citizenship), than it does to those travelling for sun, sea and sand experience? Factors that determine the susceptibility of tourists to terrorist activities include their motivation and also their background and culture, which could be important variables in determining the level of influence upon travel decisions of terrorist attacks.
Taking a dual approach to establishing the relationships between tourists, their responses to terrorism and their psychographic, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, the research will model travel decisions to different market segments. The research examines the role of the media in determining the effects of terrorism on destination choice. The methods used include a combination of a stratified tourist survey, an "experimental" approach (to provide scope and insight into specific determinants of perceptions), and a retrospective content analysis comparing coverage of attacks in different destinations and their effects on different sub-sets of the population.
Specific RQs will be more clearly defined during the fieldwork planning phase. However, the survey will examine relationships between perceptions/decisions, tourist type, media consumption patterns and other variables. The experiment would determine the influence on perceptions of key variables in media content, while the content analysis would profile media coverage of major incidents in several destinations. Contributions to theory will be in both major fields of inquiry. There will be an in-depth study of the social values underlying destination choice, and the dynamics of decision-making in the media environment. It will also test hypotheses about media effects in the overlap between individual consumer decisions and public opinion, adding to theory concerning the complex relationships between media content and public opinion.
To discuss this opportunity further please contact Professor Barry Richards.
Details of the second call for applications will be published here in due course, so please bookmark this page.
Information on how to apply can be found on the BU research pages.