Abstract
Dichotomies opposing the “virtual world” and “real life” persist in common discourses; they are frequent in outdoor sport tourism, where discursive, informational and digitally mediated practices might be viewed as hindering the experience and the contact with the environment. This chapter aims to understand such discursive oppositions among the participants, and to overcome them by documenting the integration of media practices in general within outdoor sport practices. Drawing on empirical work with travelling kayakers, paragliders and rock climbers, the chapter details wary and hostile views on media practices, then contrasts these views by showing how media practices aid or enable the coordination and communication of outdoor sport tourism activities.
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Notes
- 1.
A term that includes representations, ideas, discourses… in sum, ways of mentally grasping the world.
- 2.
Personal translation. Original quote: “nos mass-media sont au fond la variation contemporaine, hypertrophiée, assourdissante, surapparente d’un invariant de base plus ombreux, moins tapageur, et néanmoins coprésent à tous les modes de communication, tous les stades chronologiques de la circulation des signes: le dispositif véhiculaire. L’organe de transmission. Appelons-le médium.”
- 3.
All bar one are located in the south-eastern part of France: for rock climbing, the Greek island of Kalymnos, and the Verdon gorges; for kayaking, the area of Hautes-Alpes; for paragliding, Annecy Lake and Saint-André-les-Alpes.
- 4.
The encountered population, though, was mostly European, or from other rich Western countries. This is due to the sites’ locations and to the geographies of power and privilege that those sport and travel practices largely reflect.
- 5.
While media are, of course, not restricted to television, computers and smartphones, these have assumed an increasingly dominant position in media practices, and the screen has become the symbol of the passive consumption of media content.
- 6.
Some interview quotations are translated from French. Others are direct transcripts from English – often by non-native speakers.
- 7.
“Mund” (German) = “mouth”.
- 8.
For instance, eauxvives.org and kajaktour.de.
- 9.
Personal translation. “Le terme [communication] désigne des façons diverses de rendre commun: par le mouvement d’un corps communiqué à l’autre qu’il étreint, par la liaison d’une pièce qui communique avec une autre dans laquelle elle donne. La notion de communication se fait alors plus concrète, matérielle, et plurielle dans ses canaux, que ne l’implique son acception informationnelle étriquée.”
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Geffroy, V. (2021). Help or Hindrance? Media Uses and Discourses on Media in Outdoor Sport Tourism. In: Stock, M. (eds) Progress in French Tourism Geographies. Geographies of Tourism and Global Change. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52136-3_4
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