Communicating tourism through Social Media: A Content Analysis of the Official Facebook Pages of Tourism Departments of State and Central Governments of India
Dr. P.V.Sangeetha
Assistant Professor, Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai
Social media has become the order of the day through its interactive, two-way communication to attend the individual and social needs of its users. Realizing the rapid growth and power of social media, many private and public institutions have initiated their own social media pages to have more visibility and transparency in governance. Tourism is one such sphere that makes use of social media to connect people across the globe. Being a major source of economic growth and global visibility, tourism in India demands effective communication about various tourist spots and facilities available there. There are many social media pages, websites, blogs, vlogs, etc available to showcase India’s unique and diversified culture to the tourists. However, how the same has been detailed by the social media pages of tourism departments in state and central governments of India calls for analysis.
This paper analyses the official Facebook pages of tourism departments of State and Central governments of India. Facebook has been a powerful and popular social media among users. The selection of Facebook pages was done through purposive sampling based on states where India’s top tourist places are situated. Eleven Facebook pages were analyzed including the FB page of the Tourism ministry of India, Delhi, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Kashmir, Goa, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Karnataka, and Maharashtra. The content has been compared to understand the extent of use of social media among the various State and Central Governments. The results reveal that the tourism official Facebook pages are active and have wide reach. However, it lacks interactivity and effective use. The study recommends more focused and intense content development and maintenance of the official Facebook pages in order to make tourism popular among the users.
Keywords: Social Media, Tourism, Facebook, Government.
The above paper is presented at National Media Management Conference on Communicating Tourism: Media, Soft Power, and Management powered by In-Depth Communication.
16 November 2019 | St. Xavier’s College, Kothavara, Vaikom, Kerala
All abstracts have been published in conference souvenir with ISBN 978-1-647337-82-7