A summer of phobias: media discourses on ‘radical’ acts of dissent against ‘mass tourism’ in Barcelona

Abstract

In the summer of 2017, the young group Arran coordinated a series of protests in Barcelona and other Spanish cities to denounce the negative effects of global mass tourism. These acts of dissent fueled a heated public debate in both Spanish and international press, mainly due to the ‘radical’ tactics employed by the demonstrators. Following the narratives about these protest acts across a diversity of media outlets, this article identifies the complex power struggles between the different actors involved in the discussion on the benefits and externalities of global mass tourism, offering an extensive analysis of the political uses of the term ‘turismofobia’ (tourismphobia) and a revisited interpretation of the notion of the ‘protest paradigm’. This qualitative analysis was based on more than 700 media texts (including news articles, op eds and editorials) collected through the database Factiva, from January 2014 to December 2017.

Lisbon's unsustainable tourism intensification: contributions from social representations to understanding a depoliticised press discourse and its consequences

“…Besides this, we looked at the case of Lisbon, a city that has experienced recent and fast growth in tourism, and we have analysed the early years of its tourism boom and the consequent emerging debate. Places with a longer experience with massive tourism, where therefore it is long since debated and contested, can present a more heterogeneous and politicised mediated discourse (Russo and Scarnato, 2018) or can allow depicting divergent media communicative modalities contributing to delegitimise alternative views and more radical forms of political contestation (Araya López, 2021).…”

“…Namely, it is linked to the financialisation of real estate markets (Cocola-Gant and Gago, 2019) and the acceleration of gentrification processes bringing displacements and place alienation (Gotham, 2005;Díaz-Parra and Jover, 2021) -processes enabled by legal instruments, thus involving (political) choices of prioritising certain values over others. In this context, in recent years, contestations and new forms of "politicisation from below" have risen (Colomb and Novy, 2016), with residents and social movements worldwide asking for stricter regulation of the industry and a decrease in tourism growth (Araya López, 2021;Gascón, 2019). Some scholars defend that such citizens' claims and alternative discourses expressing differing positions regarding, for example, the right to place, property, and mobility are pivotal factors for redefining tourism from a more inclusive and equitable point of view (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020).…”

“…Some scholars defend that such citizens' claims and alternative discourses expressing differing positions regarding, for example, the right to place, property, and mobility are pivotal factors for redefining tourism from a more inclusive and equitable point of view (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020). Yet, recent research investigating the visibility received by these claims in press coverages (Pasquinelli and Trunfio, 2020;Russo and Scarnato, 2018;Torkington and Ribeiro, 2020) illustrates how they are often underrepresented and reduced to sporadic and emotional reactions to change (Araya López, 2021).…”