Mediated paradise: The use of social media for destination branding.

Social media has changed how Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) construct destination branding. Where once the destination branding was solely determined and communicated through one-way information channels, now technological affordances have shifted how messages are constructed, disseminated, and consumed by external audiences. Therefore, brands need to wisely use the affordances given to them by these new technologies to capture the hearts and minds of external audiences and appease their local stakeholders. Within destination branding, the destination identity is created by the branding produced by administrators of the DMOs. The administrators communicate this identity through brand messages through various channels to external stakeholders, who in turn shape the destination image through their own perception and evaluation of the brand identity. Currently, the body of research on how destination brand identity is communicated on social media is limited, with most research only focusing on the destination image. Thus, this research aims to identify the role that content on social media has in the constructing a destination brand identity. Within this research, a case study was conducted to analyze how this process takes in the real world. Therefore, this research looks at destination brand identity construction on social media in the context of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. To address this, the content and production process for the tourist-oriented Instagram pages of the local DMOs will be investigated. This research takes a mixed-method approach to understand the presented query. Firstly, a visual discourse analysis was conducted to evaluate what destination brand messages are posted on the Instagram channels, followed by in-depth expert interviews with branding and social media administrators of the local DMOs of the ABC islands. The main finding for the visual discourse analysis includes that the most prevalent brand messages and characteristics posted on social media are related to the destination's offerings, including the beaches, relaxation, nature, culture, on-island activities, and local identity. Furthermore, it was concluded through the interviews that the messages dispersed on social media are used to illustrate the values of the destination brand identity while trying to balance the expectations of different customer segments, working with local and international stakeholders, developing the physical product, and abiding by the ever-changing social media algorithms.