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Introduction
Social media (SM) are “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010, p. 61). SM activity now permeates across life domains. As a result, it is a major trend affecting tourism (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010) with calls for increasing scholarship in this area to understand SM efficacy and employment in various tourism contexts (Leung et al., 2013a).
Festivals unite tourists and residents in celebration (Falassi, 1987). It is this shared collective experience as part of the festival “product” that makes them a particularly relevant setting for investigating SM usage. Indeed, festival attendees’ experiences can be highly influenced by other attendees and SM provides a vehicle for such influence (Gyimothy and Larson, 2015). Flinn and Frew (2013) suggest even festivals that celebrate anti-commercial, counterculture reflect a setting of consumption where experiences are mediated and increasingly dependent on the co-creative SM activity of consumers. As such, communication models based on dyadic interactions may be less salient in multi-relational contexts such as festivals, where patrons interact with one another, as well as festival entertainment offerings and festival organizers (Gyimothy and Larson, 2015). Festivals and SM both aim to build community (Hede and Kellett, 2012; Leung et al., 2013a) and many are starting to provide technology applications to festival goers, an approach which merits investigation.
The introduction of Web 2.0 has drastically changed the way organizations communicate with their customers. Historically, organizations were able to control the content available to consumers and modify their image to align with how they wanted to be viewed by their audiences. A customer orientation is increasingly about interaction that allows the co-creation of value and experience with the consumer (Gyimothy and Larson, 2015). Today, Web 2.0 enables consumers to communicate directly with the organization and one another through user generated content and SM. This viral characteristic of SM has resulted in a greater need for tourism-related organizations to participate in online discussions.
With the proliferation of social networking, Facebook launched in February 2004 as a platform, where users can create and share profiles and information online, still dominates with an estimated 900,000,000 unique monthly users. Twitter is the...