"Streaking tourists and drunken travelers"

This thesis examines the current discourses that are used to describe the misbehavior of tourists in contemporary English-speaking newspapers. Currently, the role of media and media frames is significant in shaping the public opinion on certain matters. Because of the significant role of media frames, this research looked into how English-speaking media framed the misbehavior of tourists at destinations that oftentimes deal with overtourism and how this affects the perception of that particular destination. By means of a qualitative content analysis, 81 news articles from three British newspapers, four American newspapers, and two news broadcasters BBC and CNN were researched. After this, the articles were analyzed through a framing analysis. This eventually led to emergence of four current discourses that are used for the portrayal of misbehavior of tourists in the media. The discourses are single characteristics of tourists, explaining the misbehavior of tourists as a consequence of overtourism, types of observed misbehavior, which is subdivided into four types of misbehavior, and lastly, the approaches to limit the observed misbehavior. The four mentioned discourses were determined based on how these discourse fits into the existing media frames coined by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000). The frames observed were the human-interest frame, conflict frame, absence of moral constraints frame, (economic) consequences frame and responsibility frame. The discourses affect how a destination is framed by the media, and how this results in the type of tourist that is attracted to the destination. It was observed that the reporting of misbehavior of tourists is often framed as a conflict between locals and tourists. This resulted in a one-sided narrative in the reporting of the results of overtourism where the locals express their opinion on the misbehavior of tourists, it adds to the continuation of how the destination is framed by the media. This research argues that the importance of framing, of the misbehavior as well as the framing of destinations that struggle with overtourism have a significant effect on the perception and public opinion one has about a destination, and therefore could affect the success of a tourism destination.