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Analyzing News Media Coverage to Acquire and Structure Tourism Knowledge

Scharl, Arno and Dickinger, Astrid and Weichselbraun, Albert (2008) Analyzing News Media Coverage to Acquire and Structure Tourism Knowledge. Information Technology and Tourism, 10 (1). pp. 3-17.

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Abstract

Destination image significantly influences a tourist's decision-making process. The impact of news media coverage on destination image has attracted research attention and became particularly evident after catastrophic events such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that triggered a series of lethal tsunamis. Building upon previous research, this paper analyzes the prevalence of tourism destinations among 162 international media sites. Term frequency captures the attention a destination receives �­ from a general and, after contextual filtering, from a tourism perspective. Calculating sentiment estimates positive and negative media influences on destination image at a given point in time. Identifying semantic associations with the names of countries and major cities, the results of co-occurrence analysis reveal the public profiles of destinations, and the impact of current events on media coverage. These results allow national tourism organizations to assess how their destination is covered by news media in general, and in a specific tourism context. To guide analysts and marketers in this assessment, an iterative analysis of semantic associations through natural language processing extracts tourism knowledge automatically, and represents this knowledge as ontological structures.

Item Type:Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:Knowledge acquisition, News media, Destination coverage, Sentiment analysis, Tourism ontology
Subjects:H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Divisions:Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics > School of Electronics and Computer Science
Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Management
Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences
ID Code:15
Deposited By: Dr Albert Weichselbraun
Deposited On:08 Jun 2010 11:23
Last Modified:22 Jul 2010 14:25

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