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1. Introduction
The tourism market is constantly evolving (Lanza and Pigliaru, 2000), with technological developments causing rapid changes in the sector (Cai et al., 2019; Yavuz et al., 2018). Advancements in technology have changed the information sources and information sharing techniques used in the market (Kang and Schuett, 2013; Mariani et al., 2014). Social networks (e.g. Facebook, Instagram), photo-sharing websites (e.g. Flickr, Photobucket), video creation and sharing websites (e.g. YouTube, IBM Cloud Video), virtual communities, microblogging agents (e.g. Twitter), social tagging (e.g. Digg), newsreaders (e.g. Google Reader, Feedly, MobileRSS) and reviewing/rating websites for tourism establishments (e.g. TripAdvisor, Trivago) have become major platforms of information production, sharing, editing, acquisition and dissemination in the tourism field (Dedeoğlu et al., 2020a, 2020b; Munar and Jacobsen, 2014). Social media (SM) users have the capacity to upload information, stories, text, photos and audio and video files of their trips to social networking applications and websites and to share their experiences, comments, thoughts, reviews, ratings and suggestions in these networks (Kang and Schuett, 2013; Kim and Fesenmaier, 2017; Firat, 2019). The impact of this phenomenon of consumer-generated content on hospitality and tourism has been extensively researched (Barreda and Bilgihan, 2013; Herrero et al., 2015; Oliveira and Casais, 2019).
Recognition of the importance of SM to the tourism sector has increased with the growth and diversification of the related applications on both the supply and demand sides (Chu et al., 2020; Firat, 2019; Nusair, 2020; Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). On the supply side, the contents shared on SM have become a source of information for destination management organizations and businesses, helping them with manage, produce and plan marketing (Arıca and Corbaci, 2020; Blackshaw and Nazzaro, 2006; Chu et al., 2020). On the demand side, tourists use SM in two ways. First, tourists seeking objective and reliable information to plan their trips and holidays use the content on SM platforms as an information source as they form preferences and make decisions (Litvin et al., 2008; Filieri et al., 2021). Tourists form their travel preferences and make their decisions on the basis of information provided by businesses and other tourists. At this point, participant sharing can be a decisive factor (Dedeoğlu, 2019; Dedeoğlu et al.