Young Greek Travelers and Instagram’s representations: Do they break the circle of representation?

Visual representations have always been an important aspect of the traveling process due to the fact that firstly, tourism and photography are an inseparable pair and secondly, tourism is a visual experience. Consequently, representations’ influence on travelers’ gaze is undeniable throughout the years. However, often, they become part of the travelers’ mindset and by reproducing them, it leads to the so-called hermeneutic circle. Due to the uptake of social media and digitalization, visual representations have increased dramatically; destinations images are being produced not only by official tourism stakeholders but also from travelers. Therefore, Instagram being a solely visual media platform, it provides ideal conditions to coproduce and co-create the destination image of a place. This research aims to analyze the influence of Instagram’s representations on a specific group of young Greek people when traveling. More specifically, this research investigates the influence of visual representations of Instagram on young Greek people employed in the creative sector; in their tourist gaze as well in their photo-taking and sharing process. The use of in-depth-interviews as a tool to research on the viewpoints and experiences of these people and thematic analysis helped to organize the data meaningfully in codes, which led to the final themes of answering the initial question. All in all, it was concluded that young Greek peoples’ tourist gaze and photo taking process are influenced vastly from Instagram’s images. Nevertheless, it deduced that the respondents follow the hermeneutic circle to an extent and on their own terms; after visiting the main points of interest, they will try to find their own places to explore and capture, a necessary process to have an authentic and real experience. Although they will share pictures of main attractions attached to their unique style, at the same time, they will also share images of new places that they personally found interesting. This leads to the creation of new images in the imagery of destinations. Consequently, the research showed that the sample of young Greek people does not simply follow a pre-defined hermeneutic circle as Urry (1990) suggests, but through their photographs, they can fully experience and re-create the place.