Abstract
Global mobility coupled with digital technologies raises new issues regarding human relations, which can now be continuously maintained even when people are separated by a great distance. By making use of digital photography and their smartphones, tourists now have the opportunity to capture and instantly share intangible memories with their loved ones or the rest of the world. In this context, a new form of tourist practice is emerging: disconnecting from all forms of information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to escape daily life. National parks seem to offer the perfect space for people to get “away from it all”, as the wilderness is becoming increasingly important within the tourism industry precisely because it symbolises a break from the routines of daily life. Here, I explore how tourists’ use of social media includes new strategies to capture the materiality of the wilderness and, in the process, creates new ways of engaging with it. Furthermore, I show how representations of this engagement with nature and “the wilderness” are produced in a very particular way in order to be shared with the rest of the world while still conforming to the imaginary as produced by social media and simultaneously reproducing it. The aim of this contribution is to understand how the ubiquity of ICT produces new ways of experiencing the wilderness. This study relies on an extensive investigation of tourist narratives and performances produced in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada.
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Notes
- 1.
As the environmentalist John Muir states in 1898: « Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home, that wildness is a necessity, and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life » (John Muir, 1898, cited after Runte, 1920).
- 2.
My translation from French: “l’individu est appréhendé en tant que touriste lorsqu’il effectue des pratiques touristiques; celles-ci peuvent être analysées dans leurs spatialités”.
- 3.
In total, the fieldwork lasted 3 months.
- 4.
Numbers were collected in February 2019.
- 5.
This growth can be explained by the fact that car ownership became more and more common.
- 6.
Attractive visitor policies, new programmes, new infrastructure, packages for family, free access for young people, free pass for 2017 etc.
- 7.
If he mostly looks at the most “popular” ones selected by Instagram’s algorithm.
- 8.
Paul Zizka’s work can be accessed via Instagram or Facebook under the handle @paulzizkaphotography.
- 9.
This cave is one example among many others. Moraine Lake, Lake Louise and Peyto Lake are also affected by similar issues.
- 10.
It might be important to note here that these places offer reception.
- 11.
“People are, like, well, I think they’re doing this to gain followers on Instagram. Banff National Park is most likely at the centre of this trend (nature and tourism on Instagram). They have this desire to go to a place so that they can take a ‘special’ picture and increase their own popularity.” (Paul Zizka, photographer)
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Müller-Roux, M. (2021). Challenging Connectivity During Nature-Based Tourism: (Dis)connection at Banff National Park. 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_5
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