How Do Destinations Frame Cultural Heritage? Content Analysis of Portugal’s Municipal Websites

Abstract

In the current media context, heavily influenced by information and communication technologies, tourism destinations have a need to promote the most outstanding aspects of their cultures to attract the visitors who stimulate their economies. Websites are one of the tools available to carry out this task and they must be designed to communicate the destinations' heritages persuasively to a worldwide audience. Taking these premises into consideration, the objective of this research is to analyze the cultural heritage content on Portugal's municipal websites. The specific goals are to classify the most recurrent heritage elements and detect how they frame identity based on the 'local-global dialectic'. The results show that the heritage discourse is built on the selection of certain aspects-namely, culinary and architectural assets-which are emphasized through the combined use of local and national frames that strengthen the municipalities' particular values but also the fact that they are integrated into a broader and unified whole: Portugal.Sustainability 2019, 11, 947 2 of 18 objectives are to identify the most recurrent cultural and natural heritage assets and the framing of identity in these elements based on the local-global dialectic.The organization of the paper is as follows: we first delve into theoretical synergies between the domains of culture, heritage and tourism, and then consider online communication as one of the core elements of the identity discourse related to these fields. Next, the method used in the research is presented, that is, the quantitative content analysis of the country's 308 websites. The results, which reflect both univariable and multivariable descriptive data, are presented and this is followed by a qualitative discussion. Finally, the conclusions highlight some key ideas derived from the research, as well as theoretical and methodological implications, limitations and future research lines. Literature ReviewThis chapter provides a brief overview of related theoretical work and the state of the art in these fields.2.

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